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HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
No. 91
Editors :
HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A.
Prop. GILBERT MURRAY, Litt.D.,
LL.D., F.B.A.
Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A.
Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.
A complete classified list of the volumes of The
Home University Library already published
will be found at the back of this book.
THE N
)
~n ■> 3
BY
W. E. BURGHARDT Du BOIS, Ph:IX“
Felloixi of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, Editor of The Crisis
author or
“the SUPPRESSION OF THE SLAVE TRADE,” “the PHILADEL-
PHIA NEGRO,” “the SOULS OF BLACK FOLK,” “jOHN
BROWN,” “THE QUEST OF THE SILVER
FLEECE;” EDITOR OF THE “ATLANTA
UNIVERSITY STUDIES,”
I898-I9I4
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
Copyright, 1915,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
TO
A FAITHFUL HELPER
M. G. A.
/
PREFACE
The time has not yet come for a complete his-
tory of the Negro peoples. Archaeological research
in Africa has just begun, and many sources of
information in Arabian, Portuguese, and other
tongues are not fully at our command ; and, too, it
must frankly be confessed, racial prejudice against
darker peoples is still too strong in so-called civil-
ized centers for judicial appraisement of the peoples
of Africa. Much intensive monographic work in
history and science is needed to clear mooted points
and quiet the controversialist who mistakes present
personal desire for scientific proof.
Nevertheless, I have not been able to withstand
the temptation to essay such short general state-
ment of the main known facts and their fair
interpretation as shall enable the general reader
to know as men a sixth or more of the human
race. Manifestly so short a story must be mainly
conclusions and generalizations with but meager
indication of authorities and underlying argu-
ments. Possibly, if the Public will, a later and
larger book may be more satisfactory on these
points.
W. E. BURGHARDT Du BOIS.
New York City, Feb. 1, 1915.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
Preface vi
I Africa 9
II The Coming of Black Men 20
III Ethiopia and Egypt 30
IV The Niger and Islam 47
V Guinea and Congo 62
VI The Great Lakes and Zymhabwe 79
VII The War of Races at Land’s End .... 91
VIII African Culture 103
IX The Trade in Men 143
X The West Indies and Latin America . . . 160
XI The Negro in the United States .... 183
XII The Negro Problems 232
Suggestions for Further Reading 244
Index 253
MAPS
The Physical Geography of Africa 8
Ancient Kingdoms of Africa 102
Races in Africa 103
Distribution of Negro Blood, Ancient and Modern 243
The Physical Geography of Africa
THE NEGRO
CHAPTER I
AFRICA
“Behold!
The Sphinx is Africa. The bond
Of Silence is upon her. Old
And white with tombs, and rent and shorn;
With raiment wet with tears and torn.
And trampled on, yet all untamed.”
Miller
Africa is at once the most romantic and the
most tragic of continents. Its very names
reveal its mystery and wide-reaching influence.
It is the “Ethiopia” of the Greek, the “Kush”
and “Punt” of the Egyptian, and the Arabian
“Land of the Blacks.” To modem Europe it
is the “Dark Continent” and “Land of Con-
trasts”; in literature it is the seat of the Sphinx
and the lotus eaters, the home of the dwarfs,
gnomes, and pixies, and the refuge of the gods;
in commerce it is the slave mart and the source
of ivory, ebony, rubber, gold, and diamonds.
What other continent can rival in interest this
Ancient of Days?
There are those, nevertheless, who would write
universal history and leave out Africa. But how,
asks Ratzel, can one leave out the land of Egypt
9
10
THE NEGRO
and Carthage? and Frobenius declares that in
future Africa must more and more be regarded as
an integral part of the great movement of world
history. Yet it is true that the history of Africa
is unusual, and its strangeness is due in no small
degree to the physical peculiarities of the con-
tinent. With three times the area of Europe
it has a coast line a fifth shorter. Like Europe
it is a peninsula of Asia, curving southwestward
around the Indian Sea. It has few gulfs, bays,
capes, or islands. Even the rivers, though large
and long, are not means of communication with
the outer world, because from the central high
plateau they plunge in rapids and cataracts to
the narrow coastlands and the sea.
The general physical contour of Africa has
been likened to an inverted plate with one or more
rows of mountains at the edge and a low coastal
belt. In the south the central plateau is three
thousand or more feet above the sea, while in the
north it is a little over one thousand feet. Thus
two main divisions of the continent are easily
distinguished : the broad northern rectangle,
reaching down as far as the Gulf of Guinea and
Cape Guardafui, with seven million square miles;
and the peninsula which tapers toward the south,
with five million square miles.
Four great rivers and many lesser streams water
the continent. The greatest is the Congo in the
center, with its vast curving and endless estuaries;
then the Nile, draining the cluster of the Great
Lakes and flowing northward “like some grave,
AFRICA
11
mighty thought, threading a dream”; the Niger
in the northwest, watering the Sudan below the
Sahara; and, finally, the Zambesi, with its greater
Niagara in the southeast. Even these waters
leave room for deserts both south and north, but
the greater ones are the three million square
miles of sand wastes in the north.
More than any other land, Africa lies in the
tropics, ■with a warm, dry climate, save in the
central Congo region, where rain at all seasons
brings tropical luxuriance. The flora is rich but
not wide in variety, including the gum acacia,
ebony, several dye woods, the kola nut, and prob-
ably tobacco and millet. To these many plants
have been added in historic times. The fauna is
rich in mammals, and here, too, many from other
continents have been widely introduced and
used.
Primarily Africa is the Land of the Blacks.
The world has always been familiar with black
men, who represent one of the most ancient of
human stocks. Of the ancient world gathered
about the Mediterranean, they formed a part and
were viewed with no surprise or dislike, because
this world saw them come and go and play their
part with other men. Was Clitus the brother-
in-law of Alexander the Great less to be honored
because he happened to be black? Was Terence
less famous? The medieval European world,
developing under the favorable physical condi-
tions of the north temperate zone, knew the black
man chiefly as a legend or occasional curiosity.
12
THE NEGRO
but still as a fellow man — an Othello or a Prester
John or an Antar.
The modern world, in contrast, knows the
Negro chiefly as a bond slave in the West Indies
and America. Add to this the fact that the
darker races in other parts of the world have, in
the last four centuries, lagged behind the flying
and even feverish footsteps of Europe, and we
face to-day a widespread assumption through-
out the dominant world that color is a mark of
inferiority.
The result is that in writing of this, one of the
most ancient, persistent, and widespread stocks of
mankind, one faces astounding prejudice. That
which may be assumed as true of white men must
be proven beyond peradventure if it relates to
Negroes. One who writes of the development
of the Negro race must continually insist that he
is writing of a normal human stock, and that
whatever it is fair to predicate of the mass of
human beings may be predicated of the Negro.
It is the silent refusal to do this which has led
to so much false writing on Africa and of its
inhabitants. Take, for instance, the answer to
the apparently simple question “What is a
Negro?” We find the most extraordinary con-
fusion of thought and difference of opinion.
There is a certain type in the minds of most
people which, as David Livingstone said, can
be found only in caricature and not in real life.
When scientists have tried to find an extreme
type of black, ugly, and woolly-haired Negro,
AFRICA
13
they have been compelled more and more to
limit his home even in Africa. At least nine-
tenths of the African people do not at all conform
to this type, and the typical Negro, after being
denied a dwelling place in the Sudan, along the
Nile, in East Central Africa, and in South Africa,
was finally given a very small country between
the Senegal and the Niger, and even there was
found to give trace of many stocks. As Win wood
Reade says, “The typical Negro is a rare variety
even among Negroes.”
As a matter of fact we cannot take such ex-
treme and largely fanciful stock as typifying that
which we may fairly call the Negro race. In the
case of no other race is so narrow a definition
attempted. A “white” man may be of any color,
size, or facial conformation and have endless
variety of cranial measurement and physical
characteristics. A “yellow” man is perhaps an
even vaguer conception.
In fact it is generally recognized to-day that
no scientific definition of race is possible. Dif-
ferences, and striking differences, there are be-
tween men and groups of men, but they fade
into each other so insensibly that we can only
indicate the main divisions of men in broad out-
lines. As Von Luschan says, “The question of
the number of human races has quite lost its
raison d’etre and has become a subject rather of
philosophic speculation than of scientific research.
It is of no more importance now to know how
many human races there are than to know how
14
THE NEGRO
many angels can dance on the point of a needle.
Our aim now is to find out how ancient and primi-
tive races developed from others and how races
changed or evolved through migration and in-
ter-breeding.” 1
The mulatto (using the term loosely to in-
dicate either an intermediate type between white
and black or a mingling of the two) is as typically
African as the black man and cannot logically
be included in the “white” race, especially when
American usage includes the mulatto in the Negro
race.
It is reasonable, according to fact and historic
usage, to include under the word “Negro” the
darker peoples of Africa characterized by a brown
skin, curled or “frizzled” hair, full and some-
times everted lips, a tendency to a development
of the maxillary parts of the face, and a doli-
chocephalic head. This type is not fixed or
definite. The color varies widely; it is never
black or bluish, as some say, and it becomes
often fight brown or yellow. The hair varies from
curly to a wool-like mass, and the facial angle and
cranial form show wide variation.
It is as impossible in Africa as elsewhere to
fix with any certainty the limits of racial varia-
tion due to climate and the variation due to in-
termingling. In the past, when scientists assumed
one unvarying Negro type, every variation from
that type was interpreted as meaning mixture
1 Von Luschan: in Inter-Racial Problems, p. 16.
AFRICA
15
of blood. To-day we recognize a broader normal
African type which, as Palgrave says, may best
be studied “among the statues of the Egyptian
rooms of the British Museum; the larger gentle
eye, the full but not over-protruding lips, the
rounded contour, and the good-natured, easy,
sensuous expression. This is the genuine African
model.” To this race Africa in the main and
parts of Asia have belonged since prehistoric
times.
The color of this variety of man, as the color
of other varieties, is due to climate. Conditions
of heat, cold, and moisture, working for thou-
sands of years through the skin and other organs,
have given men their differences of color. This
color pigment is a protection against sunlight
and consequently varies with the intensity of
the sunlight. Thus in Africa we find the black-
est men in the fierce sunlight of the desert, red
pygmies in the forest, and yellow Bushmen on
the cooler southern plateau.
Next to the color, the hair is the most dis-
tinguishing characteristic, of the Negro, but the
two characteristics do not vary with each other.
Some of the blackest of the Negroes have curly
rather than woolly hair, while the crispest, most
closely curled hair is found among the yellow
Hottentots and Bushmen. The difference be-
tween the hair of the lighter and darker races is a
difference of degree, not of kind, and can be
easily measured. If the hair follicles of a China-
man, a European, and a Negro are cut across
16
THE NEGRO
transversely /it will be found that the diameter of
the first is 100 by 77 to 85, the second 100 by 62
to 72, while that of the Negro is 100 by 40 to 60.
This elliptical form of the Negro’s hair causes it
to curl more or less tightly.
There have been repeated efforts to discover,
by measurements of various kinds, further and
more decisive differences which would serve as
really scientific determinants of race. Gradually
these efforts have been given up. To-day we
realize that there are no hard and fast racial
types among men. Race is a dynamic and not a
static conception, and the typical races are con-
tinually changing and developing, amalgamating
and differentiating. In this little book, then, we
are studying the history of the darker part of the
human family, which is separated from the rest
of mankind by no absolute physical line, but which
nevertheless forms, as a mass, a social group dis-
tinct in history, appearance, and to some extent
in spiritual gift.
We cannot study Africa without, however,
noting some of the other races concerned in its
history, particularly the Asiatic Semites. The
intercourse of Africa with Arabia and other parts
of Asia has been so close and long-continued that
it is impossible to-day to disentangle the blood
relationships. Negro blood certainly appears in
strong strain among the Semites, and the obvious
mulatto groups in Africa, arising from ancient
and modern mingling of Semite and Negro, has
given rise to the term “Hamite,” under cover of
AFRICA
17
which millions of Negroids have been charac-
teristically transferred to the “white” race by
some eager scientists.
The earliest Semites came to Africa across the
Red Sea. The Phoenicians came along the north-
ern coasts a thousand years before Christ and
began settlements which culminated in Carthage
and extended down the Atlantic shores of North
Africa nearly to the Gulf of Guinea.
From the earliest times the Greeks have been
in contact with Africa as visitors, traders, and
colonists, and the Persian influence came with
Cambyses and others. Roman Africa was
bounded by the desert, but at times came into
contact with the blacks across the Sahara and
in the valley of the Nile. After the breaking up
of the Roman Empire the Greek and Latin
Christians filtered through Africa, followed finally
by a Germanic invasion in 429 a.d.
In the seventh century the All-Mother, Asia,
claimed Africa again for her own and blew a
cloud of Semitic Mohammedanism all across
North Africa, veiling the dark continent from
Europe for a thousand years and converting
vast masses of the blacks to Islam. The Portu-
guese began to raise the veil in the fifteenth cen-
tury, sailing down the Atlantic coast and initiating
the modern slave trade. The Spanish, French,
Dutch, and English followed them, but as traders
in men rather than explorers.
The Portuguese explored the coasts of the Gulf
of Guinea, visiting the interior kingdoms, and then
18
THE NEGRO
passing by the mouth of the Congo proceeded
southward. Eventually they rounded the Cape
of Good Hope and pursued their explorations as
far as the mountains of Abyssinia. This began
the modern exploration of Africa, which is a curi-
ous fairy tale, and recalls to us the great names
of Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Stanley, Barth,
Schweinfurth, and many others. In this way
Africa has been made known to the modern world.
The difficulty of this modern lifting of the veil
of centuries emphasizes two physical facts that
underlie all African history : the peculiar inaccessi-
bility of the continent to peoples from without,
which made it so easily possible for the great
human drama played here to hide itself from the
ears of other worlds; and, on the other hand, the
absence of interior barriers — the great stretch
of that central plateau which placed practically
every budding center of culture at the mercy of
barbarism, sweeping a thousand miles, with no
Alps or Himalayas or Appalachians to hinder.
With this peculiarly uninviting coast line and
the difficulties in interior segregation must be
considered the climate of Africa. While there is
much diversity and many salubrious tracts along
with vast barren wastes, yet, as Sir Harry John-
ston well remarks, “Africa is the chief strong-
hold of the real Devil — the reactionary forces
of Nature hostile to the uprise of Humanity.
Here Beelzebub, King of the Flies, marshals his
vermiform and arthropod hosts — insects, ticks,
and nematode worms — which more than in
AFRICA
19
other continents (excepting Negroid Asia) con-
vey to the skin, veins, intestines, and spinal
marrow of men and other vertebrates the micro-
organisms which cause deadly, disfiguring, or
debilitating diseases, or themselves create the
morbid condition of the persecuted human being,
beasts, bird, reptile, frog, or fish.” 1 The in-
habitants of this land have had a sheer fight for
physical survival comparable with that in no
other great continent, and this must not be for-
gotten when we consider their history.
1 Johnston: Negro in the New World , pp. 14-15.
CHAPTER II
THE COMING OF BLACK MEN
The movements of prehistoric man can be
seen as yet but dimly in the uncertain mists of
time. This is the story that to-day seems most
probable: from some center in southern Asia
primitive human beings began to differentiate in
two directions. Toward the south appeared
the primitive Negro, long-headed and with
flattened hair follicle. He spread along southern
Asia and passed over into Africa, where he sur-
vives to-day as the reddish dwarfs of the center
and the Bushmen of South Africa.
Northward and eastward primitive man be-
came broader headed and straight-haired and
spread over eastern Asia, forming the Mongolian
type. Either through the intermingling of these
two types or, as some prefer to think, by the direct
prolongation of the original primitive man, a
third intermediate type of human being appeared
with hair and cranial measurement intermediate
between the primitive Negro and Mongolian.
All these three types of men intermingled their
blood freely and developed variations according
to climate and environment.
Other and older theories and legends of the
origin and spread of mankind are of interest now
COMING OF BLACK MEN
21
only because so many human beings have be-
lived them in the past. The biblical story of
Shem, Ham, and Japheth retains the interest of
a primitive myth with its measure of allegorical
truth,1 but has, of course, no historic basis.
The older “Aryan” theory assumed the mi-
gration into Europe of one dominant Asiatic
race of civilized conquerors, to whose blood and
influence all modern culture was due. To this
“white” race Semitic Asia, a large part of black
Africa, and all Europe was supposed to belong.
This “Aryan” theory has been practically aban-
doned in the light of recent research, and it seems
probable now that from the primitive Negroid
stock evolved in Asia the Semites either by local
variation or intermingling with other stocks; later
there developed the Mediterranean race, with
Negroid characteristics, and the modern Negroes.
The blue-eyed, light-haired Germanic people may
have arisen as a modern variation of the mixed
peoples produced by the mingling of Asiatic and
African elements. The last word on this develop-
ment has not yet been said, and there is still much
1 Ham is probably the Egyptian word “Khem” (black),
the native name of Egypt. In the original myth Canaan and
not Ham was Noah’s third son.
The biblical story of the “curse of Canaan” (Genesis IX,
24-25) has been the basis of an astonishing literature which
has to-day only a psychological interest. It is sufficient to
remember that for several centuries leaders of the Christian
Church gravely defended Negro slavery and oppression as
the rightful curse of God upon the descendants of a son who
had been disrespectful to his drunken father! Cf. Bishop
Hopkins: Bible Views of Slaver y, p. 7.
22
THE NEGRO
to learn and explain; but it is certainly proved
to-day beyond doubt that the so-called Hamites
of Africa, the brown and black curly and frizzly-
haired inhabitants of North and East Africa,
are not “white” men if we draw the line between
white and black in any logical way.
The primitive Negroid race of men developed
in Asia wandered eastward as well as westward.
They entered on the one hand Burmah and the
South Sea Islands, and on the other hand they
came through Mesopotamia and gave curly hair
and a Negroid type to Jew, Syrian, and Assy-
rian. Ancient statues of Indian divinities show
the Negro type with black face and close-
curled hair, and early Babylonian culture was
Negroid. In Arabia the Negroes may have
divided, and one stream perhaps wandered into
Europe by way of Syria. Traces of these Ne-
groes are manifest not only in skeletons, but in
the brunette type of all South Europe. The other
branch proceeded to Egypt and tropical Africa.
Another, but perhaps less probable, theory is
that ancient Negroes may have entered Africa
from Europe, since the most ancient skulls of
Algeria are Negroid.
The primitive African was not an extreme type.
One may judge from modern pygmy and Bush-
men that his color was reddish or yellow, and
his skull was sometimes round like the Mon-
golian. He entered Africa not less than fifty
thousand years ago and settled eventually in
the broad region between Lake Chad and the
COMING OF BLACK MEN
23
Great Lakes and remained there long stretches of
years.
After a lapse of perhaps thirty thousand years
there entered Africa a further migration of
Asiatic people, Negroid in many characteristics,
but lighter and straighter haired than the primi-
tive Negroes. From this Mediterranean race
was developed the modern inhabitants of the
shores of the Mediterranean in Europe, Asia, and
Africa and, by mingling with the primitive
Negroes, the ancient Egyptians and modern
Negroid races of Africa.
As we near historic times the migrations of
men became more frequent from Asia and from
Europe, and in Africa came movements and ming-
lings which give to the whole of Africa a distinct
mulatto character. The primitive Negro stock
was “mulatto” in the sense of being not widely
differentiated from the dark, original Australoid
stock. As the earlier yellow Negro developed in
the African tropics to the bigger, blacker type,
he was continually mingling his blood with
similar types developed in temperate climes to
sallower color and straighter hair.
We find therefore, in Africa to-day, every
degree of development in Negroid stocks and
every degree of intermingling of these develop-
ments, both among African peoples and between
Africans, Europeans, and Asiatics. The mistake
is continually made of considering these types
as transitions between absolute Caucasians
and absolute Negroes. No such absolute type
24
THE NEGRO
ever existed on either side. Both were slowly
differentiated from a common ancestry and con-
tinually remingled their blood while the dif-
ferentiating was progressing. From prehistoric
times down to to-day Africa is, in this sense,
primarily the land of the mulatto. So, too, was
earlier Europe and Asia; only in these countries
the mulatto was early bleached by the climate,
whiie in Africa he was darkened.
It is not easy to summarize the history of
these dark African peoples, because so little is
known and so much is still in dispute. Yet, by
avoiding the real controversies and being unafraid
of mere questions of definition, we may trace a
great human movement with considerable defi-
niteness.
Three main Negro types early made their
appearance: the lighter and smaller primitive
stock; the larger forest Negro in the center and
on the west coast, and the tall, black Nilotic
Negro in the eastern Sudan. In the earliest
times we find the Negroes in the valley of the
Nile, pressing downward from the interior. Here
they mingled with Semitic types, and after a
lapse of millenniums there arose from this ming-
ling the culture of Ethiopia and Egypt, probably
the first of higher human cultures.
To the west of the Nile the Negroes expanded
straight across the continent to the Atlantic.
Centers of higher culture appeared very early
along the Gulf of Guinea and curling backward
met Egyptian, Ethiopian, and even European
COMING OF BLACK MEN
25
and Asiatic influences about Lake Chad. To the
southeast, nearer the primitive seats of the earli-
est African immigrants and open to Egyptian
and East Indian influences, the Negro culture
which culminated at Zymbabwe arose, and one
may trace throughout South Africa its wide rami-
fications.
All these movements gradually aroused the
central tribes to unrest. They beat against the
barriers north, northeast, and west, but grad-
ually settled into a great southeastward migra-
tion. Calling themselves proudly La Bantu
(The People), they grew by agglomeration into
a warlike nation, speaking one language. They
eventually conquered all Africa south of the Gulf
of Guinea and spread their influence to the
northward.
While these great movements were slowly
transforming Africa, she was also receiving in-
fluences from beyond her shores and sending
influences out. With mulatto Egypt black
Africa was always in closest touch, so much so
that to some all evidences of Negro uplift seem
Egyptian in origin. The truth is, rather, that
Egypt was herself always palpably Negroid, and
from her vantage ground as almost the only
African gateway received and transmitted Negro
ideals.
Phoenician, Greek, and Roman came into
touch more or less with black Africa. Carthage,
that North African city of a million men, had a
large caravan trade with Negroland in ivory,
26
THE NEGRO
metals, cloth, precious stones, and slaves. Black
men served in the Carthaginian armies and
marched with Hannibal on Rome. In some of
the North African kingdoms the infiltration of
Negro blood was very large and kings like Mas-
sinissa and Jugurtha were Negroid. By way of
the Atlantic the Carthaginians reached the
African west coast. Greek and Roman in-
fluences came through the desert, and the
Byzantine Empire and Persia came into com-
munication with Negroland by way of the valley
of the Nile. The influence of these trade routes,
added to those of Egypt, Ethiopia, Benin, and
Yoruba, stimulated centers of culture in the
central and western Sudan, and European and
African trade early reached large volume.
Negro soldiers were used largely in the armies
that enabled the Mohammedans to conquer
North Africa and Spain. Beginning in the tenth
century and slowly creeping across the desert
into Negroland, the new religion found an
already existent culture and came, not a con-
queror, but as an adapter and inspirer. Civili-
zation received new impetus and a wave of
Mohammedanism swept eastward, erecting the
great kingdoms of Melle, the Songhay, Bornu,
and the Hausa states. The older Negro culture
was not overthrown, but, like a great wedge,
pushed upward and inward from Yoruba, and
gave stubborn battle to the newer culture for
seven or eight centuries.
Then it was, in the fifteenth century, that the
COMING OF BLACK MEN
27
heart disease of Africa developed in its most
virulent form. There is a modern theory that
black men are and always have been naturally
slaves. Nothing is further from the truth. In
the ancient world Africa was no more a slave
hunting ground than Europe or Asia, and both
Greece and Rome had much larger numbers of
white slaves than of black. It was natural that
a stream of black slaves should have poured into
Egypt, because the chief line of Egyptian con-
quest and defense lay toward the heart of Africa.
Moreover, the Egyptians, themselves of Negro
descent, had not only Negro slaves but Negroes
among their highest nobility and even among
their Pharaohs. Mohammedan conquerors en-
slaved peoples of all colors in Europe, Asia, and
Africa, but eventually their empire centered in
Asia and Africa and their slaves came prin-
cipally from these countries. Asia submitted to
Islam except in the Far East, which was self-
protecting. Negro Africa submitted only par-
tially, and the remaining heathen were in small
states which could not effectively protect them-
selves against the Mohammedan slave trade.
In this wise the slave trade gradually began to
center in Africa, for religious and political rather
than for racial reasons.
The typical African culture was the culture of
family, town, and small tribe. Hence domestic
slavery easily developed a slave trade through
war and commerce. Only the integrating force
of state building could have stopped this slave
28
THE NEGRO
trade. Was this failure to develop the great
state a racial characteristic? This does not
seem a fair conclusion. In four great centers
state building began in Africa. In Ethiopia
several large states were built up, but they
tottered before the onslaughts of Egypt, Persia,
Rome, and Byzantium, on the one hand, and
finally fell before the turbulent Bantu warriors
from the interior. The second attempt at em-
pire building began in the southeast, but the
same Bantu hordes, pressing now slowly, now
fiercely, from the congested center of the con-
tinent, gradually overthrew this state and
erected on its ruins a series of smaller and
more transient kingdoms.
The third attempt at state building arose on
the Guinea coast in Benin and Yoruba. It never
got much beyond a federation of large industrial
cities. Its expansion toward the Congo valley
was probably a prime cause of the original Bantu
movements to the southeast. Toward the north
and northeast, on the other hand, these city-
states met the Sudanese armed with the new
imperial Mohammedan idea. Just as Latin
Rome gave the imperial idea to the Nordic races,
so Islam brought this idea to the Sudan.
In the consequent attempts at imperialism in
the western Sudan there arose the largest of the
African empires. Two circumstances, however,
militated against this empire building: first,
the fierce resistance of the heathen south made
war continuous and slaves one of the articles of
COMING OF BLACK MEN
29
systematic commerce. Secondly, the highways
of legitimate African commerce had for millen-
niums lain to the northward. These were
suddenly closed by the Moors in the sixteenth
century, and the Negro empires were thrown
into the turmoil of internal war.
It was then that the European slave traders
came from the southwest. They found par-
tially disrupted Negro states on the west coast
and falling empires in the Sudan, together with
the old unrest of over-population and migration
in the valley of the Congo. They not only
offered a demand for the usual slave trade, but
they increased it to an enormous degree, until
their demand, added to the demand of the
Mohammedan in Africa and Asia, made human
beings the highest priced article of commerce
in Africa. Under such circumstances there
could be but one end: the virtual uprooting of
ancient African culture, leaving only misty re-
minders of the ruin in the customs and work of
the people. To complete this disaster came the
partition of the continent among European na-
tions and the modern attempt to exploit the
country and the natives for the economic bene-
fit of the white world, together with the trans-
planting of black nations to the new western
world and their rise and self-assertion there.
CHAPTER III
ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT
Having viewed now the land and movements '
of African people in main outline, let us scan
more narrowly the history of five main centers
of activity and culture, namely: the valleys of
the Nile and of the Congo, the borders of the
great Gulf of Guinea, the Sudan, and South
Africa. These divisions do not cover all of
Negro Africa, but they take in the main areas
and the main lines in development.
First, we turn to the valley of the Nile, per-
haps the most ancient of known seats of civili-
zation in the world, and certainly the oldest in
Africa, with a culture reaching back six or eight
thousand years. Like all civilizations it drew
largely from without and undoubtedly arose in
the valley of the Nile, because that valley was so
easily made a center for the meeting of men of all
types and from all parts of the world. At the
same time Egyptian civilization seems to have
been African in its beginnings and in its main
line of development, despite strong influences
from all parts of Asia. Of what race, then, were
the Egyptians? They certainly were not white
in any sense of the modern use of that word —
neither in color nor physical measurement, in
so
ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT
31
hair nor countenance, in language nor social
customs. They stood in relationship nearest
the Negro race in earliest times, and then grad-
ually through the infiltration of Mediterranean
and Semitic elements became what would be
described in America as a light mulatto stock of
Octoroons or Quadroons. This stock was varied
continually: now by new infiltration of Negro
blood from the south, now by Negroid and Sem-
itic blood from the east, now by Berber types
from the north and west.
Egyptian monuments show distinctly Negro
and mulatto faces. Herodotus, in an incontro-
vertible passage, alludes to the Egyptians as
“black and curly -haired ” 1 — a peculiarly signifi-
cant statement from one used to the brunette
Mediterranean type; in another passage, con-
cerning the fable of the Dodonian Oracle, he
again alludes to the swarthy color of the Egyp-
tians as exceedingly dark and even black.
iEschylus, mentioning a boat seen from the
shore, declares that its crew are Egyptians, be-
cause of their black complexions.
Modern measurements, with all their admitted
limitations, show that in the Thebaid from one-
seventh to one-third of the Egyptian popula-
tion were Negroes, and that of the predynastic
Egyptians less than half could be classed as non-
Negroid. Judging from measurements in the
tombs of nobles as late as the eighteenth dynasty,
1 " ain&s Si tUatra rjjSe Kai Srt nt\ayxpots tla i nal oiXorpixeJ.”
Liber II, Cap. 104.
32 THE NEGRO
Negroes form at least one-sixth of the higher
class.1
Such measurements are by no means conclu-
sive, but they are apt to be under rather than
over statements of the prevalence of Negro blood.
Head measurements of Negro Americans would
probably place most of them in the category of
whites. The evidence of language also connects
Egypt with Africa and the Negro race rather than
with Asia, while religious ceremonies and social
customs all go to strengthen this evidence.
The ethnic history of Northeast Africa would
seem, therefore, to have been this: predynastic
Egypt was settled by Negroes from Ethiopia.
They were of varied types: the broad-nosed,
woolly -haired type to which the word “Negro”
is sometimes confined; the black, curly-haired,
sharper featured type, which must be con-
sidered an equally Negroid variation. These
Negroes met and mingled with the invading
Mediterranean race from North Africa and Asia.
Thus the blood of the sallower race spread south
and that of the darker race north. Black priests
appear in Crete three thousand years before
Christ, and Arabia is to this day thoroughly
permeated with Negro blood. Perhaps, as Cham-
berlain says, “one of the prime reasons why no
civilization of the type of that of the Nile arose
in other parts of the continent, if such a thing
were at all possible, was that Egypt acted as a
sort of channel by which the genius of Negro-
1 Cf. Maciver and Thompson: Ancient Races of the Tkebaid.
ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT
33
land was drafted off into the service of Medi-
terranean and Asiatic culture.” 1
To one familiar with the striking and beautiful
types arising from the mingling of Negro with
Latin and Germanic types in America, the puzzle
of the Egyptian type is easily solved. It was
unlike any of its neighbors and a unique type
until one views the modern mulatto; then the
faces of Rahotep and Nefert, of Khafra and
Amenemhat I, of Aahmes and Nefertari, and
even of the great Ramessu II, become curiously
familiar.
The history of Egypt is a science in itself.
Before the reign of the first recorded king, five
thousand years or more before Christ, there had
already existed in Egypt a culture and art arising
by long evolution from the days of paleolithic
man, among a distinctly Negroid people. About
4777 b.c. Aha-Mena began the first of three
successive Egyptian empires. This lasted two
thousand years, with many Pharaohs, like Khafra
of the Fourth Dynasty, of a strongly Negroid
cast of countenance.
At the end of the period the empire fell apart
into Egyptian and Ethiopian halves, and a
silence of three centuries ensued. It is quite
possible that an incursion of conquering black
men from the south poured over the land in
these years and dotted Egypt in the next
centuries with monuments on which the full-
blooded Negro type is strongly and trium-
1 Journal of Race Development, I, 484.
34
THE NEGRO
phantly impressed. The great Sphinx at Gizeh, so
familiar to all the world, the Sphinxes of Tanis,
the statue from the Fayum, the statue of the
Esquiline at Rome, and the Colossi of Bubastis
all represent black, full-blooded Negroes and
are described by Petrie as “having high cheek
bones, flat cheeks, both in one plane, a mas-
sive nose, firm projecting lips, and thick hair,
with an austere and almost savage expression
of power.” 1
Blyden, the great modern black leader of
West Africa, said of the Sphinx at Gizeh: “Her
features are decidedly of the African or Negro
type, with ‘expanded nostrils.’ If, then, the
Sphinx was placed here — looking out in majestic
and mysterious silence over the empty plain
where once stood the great city of Memphis in
all its pride and glory, as an ‘emblematic repre-
sentation of the king’ — is not the inference clear
as to the peculiar type or race to which that king
belonged?” 2
The middle empire arose 3064 b.c. and lasted
nearly twenty-four centuries. Under Pharaohs
whose Negro descent is plainly evident, like
Amenemhat I and III and Usertesen I, the an-
cient glories of Egypt were restored and surpassed.
At the same time there is strong continuous
pressure from the wild and unruly Negro tribes
of the upper Nile valley, and we get some idea of
the fear which they inspired throughout Egypt
1 Petrie: History of Egypt, I, 51, 237.
* From J Vest Africa lo Palestine, p. 114.
ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT
35
when we read of the great national rejoicing
which followed the triumph of Usertesen III
(c. 2660-22) over these hordes. He drove them
back and attempted to confine them to the edge
of the Nubian Desert above the Second Cataract.
Hemmed in here, they set up a state about this
time and founded Nepata.
Notwithstanding this repulse of black men,
less than one hundred years later a full-blooded
Negro from the south, Ra Nehesi, was seated on
the throne of the Pharaohs and was called
“The king’s eldest son.” This may mean that
an incursion from the far south had placed a
black conqueror on the throne. At any rate, the
whole empire was in some way shaken, and two
hundred years later the invasion of the Hyksos
began. The domination of Hyksos kings who
may have been Negroids from Asia 1 lasted for
five hundred years.
The redemption of Egypt from these bar-
barians came from Upper Egypt, led by the
mulatto Aahmes. He founded in 1703 b.c. the
new empire, which lasted fifteen hundred years.
His queen, Nefertari, “the most venerated figure
of Egyptian history,”2 was a Negress of great
beauty, strong personality, and of unusual ad-
ministrative force. She was for many years
1 Depending partly on whether the so-called Hyksos
sphinxes belong to the period of the Hyksos kings or to an
earlier period (ef. Petrie, I, 52-53, 237). That Negroids
largely dominated in the early history of western Asia is proven
by the monuments.
* Petrie: History of Egypt, II, 337.
36
THE NEGRO
joint ruler with her son, Amenhotep I, who suc-
ceeded his father.1
The new empire was a period of foreign con-
quest and internal splendor and finally of
religious dispute and overthrow. Syria was con-
quered in these reigns and Asiatic civilization
and influences poured in upon Egypt. The great
Tahutmes III, whose reign was “one of the
grandest and most eventful in Egyptian history,” 2
had a strong Negroid countenance, as had also
Queen Hatshepsut, who sent the celebrated ex-
pedition to reopen ancient trade with the Hot-
tentots of Punt. A new strain of Negro blood
came to the royal line through Queen Mutemua
about 1420 b.c., whose son, Amenhotep III,
built a great temple at Luqsor and the Colossi
at Memnon.
The whole of the period in a sense culminated
in the great Ramessu II, the oppressor of the
Hebrews, wTho with his Egyptian, Libyan, and
Negro armies fought half the world. His reign,
however, was the beginning of decline, and foes
began to press Egypt from the white north and
the black south. The priests transferred their
power at Thebes, while the Assyrians under
Nimrod overran Lower Egypt. The center of
interest is now transferred to Ethiopia, and
we pass to the more shadowy history of that
land.
The most perfect example of Egyptian poetry
1 Chamberlain: Journal of Race Development, April, 1911.
2 Petrie: Historj/ of Egypt, II, 337.
ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT
37
left to us is a celebration of the prowess of
Usertesen III in confining the turbulent Negro
tribes to the territory below the Second Cataract
of the Nile. The Egyptians called this territory
Kush, and in the farthest confines of Kush lay
Punt, the cradle of their race. To the ancient
Mediterranean world Ethiopia (i.e., the Land of
the Black-faced) was a region of gods and
fairies. Zeus and Poseidon feasted each year
among the “blameless Ethiopians,” and Black
Memnon, King of Ethiopia, was one of the great-
est of heroes.
“The Ethiopians conceive themselves,” says
Diodorus Siculus (Lib. Ill), “to be of greater
antiquity than any other nation; and it is prob-
able that, born under the sun’s path, its warmth
may have ripened them earlier than other men.
They suppose themselves also to be the inven-
tors of divine worship, of festivals, of solemn
assemblies, of sacrifices, and every religious
practice. They affirm that the Egyptians are
one of their colonies.”
The Egyptians themselves, in later days,
affirmed that they and their civilization came
from the south and from the black tribes of
Punt, and certainly “at the earliest period in
which human remains have been recovered Egypt
and Lower Nubia appear to have formed cul-
turally and racially one land.” 1
The forging ahead of Egypt in culture was
mainly from economic causes. Ethiopia, living
1 Reisner: Archeological Survey of Nubia, I, 319.
38
THE NEGRO
in a much poorer land with limited agricultural
facilities, held to the old arts and customs, and
at the same time lost the best elements of its
population to Egypt, absorbing meantime the
oncoming and wilder Negro tribes from the south
and west. Under the old empire, therefore,
Ethiopia remained in comparative poverty,
except as some of its tribes invaded Egypt with
their handicrafts.
As soon as the civilization below the Second
Cataract reached a height noticeably above
that of Ethiopia, there was continued effort to
protect that civilization against the incursion of
barbarians. Hundreds of campaigns through
thousands of years repeatedly subdued or checked
the blacks and brought them in as captives to
mingle their blood with the Egyptian nation;
but the Egyptian frontier was not advanced.
A separate and independent Ethiopian cul-
ture finally began to arise during the middle
empire of Egypt and centered at Nepata and
Meroe. Widespread trade in gold, ivory, precious
stones, skins, wood, and works of handicraft
arose.1 The Negro began to figure as the great
trader of Egypt.
This new wealth of Ethiopia excited the cupid-
ity of the Pharaohs and led to aggression and larger
intercourse, until at last, when the dread Hyksos
appeared, Ethiopia became both a physical and
cultural refuge for conquered Egypt. The
legitimate Pharaohs moved to Thebes, nearer the
1 Hoskins declares that the arch had its origin in Ethiopia.
ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT
39
boundaries of Ethiopia, and from here, under
Negroid rulers, Lower Egypt was redeemed.
The ensuing new empire witnessed the gradual
incorporation of Ethiopia into Egypt, although
the darker kingdom continued to resist. Both
mulatto Pharaohs, Aahmes and Amenhotep I,
sent expeditions into Ethiopia, and in the latter’s
day sons of the reigning Pharaoh began to as-
sume the title of “Royal Son of Kush” in some
such way as the son of the King of England
becomes the Prince of Wales.
Trade relations were renewed with Punt under
circumstances which lead us to place that land
in the region of the African lakes. The Sudanese
tribes were aroused by these and other incur-
sions, until the revolts became formidable in
the fourteenth century before Christ.
Egyptian culture, however, gradually con-
quered Ethiopia where her armies could not, and
Egyptian religion and civil rule began to center
in the darker kingdom. When, therefore, She-
sheng I, the Libyan, usurped the throne of the
Pharaohs in the tenth century b.c., the Egyptian
legitimate dynasty went to Nepata as king
priests and established a theocratic monarchy.
Gathering strength, the Ethiopian kingdom
under this dynasty expanded north about 750
B.c. and for a century ruled all Egypt.
The first king, Pankhy, was Egyptian bred
and not noticeably Negroid, but his successors
showed more and more evidence of Negro blood
— Kashta the Kushite, Shabaka, Tarharqa, and
40
THE NEGRO
Tanutamen. During the century of Ethiopian
rule a royal son was appointed to rule Egypt,
just as formerly a royal Egyptian had ruled
Kush. In many ways this Ethiopian kingdom
showed its Negro peculiarities: first, in its wor-
ship of distinctly Sudanese gods; secondly, in
the rigid custom of female succession in the king-
dom, and thirdly, by the election of kings from
the various royal claimants to the throne.
“It was the heyday of the Negro. For the
greater part of the century. . . . Egypt itself
was subject to the blacks, just as in the new
empire the Sudan had been subject to Egypt.”1
Egypt now began to fall into the hands of
Asia and was conquered first by the Assyrians
and then by the Persians, but the Ethiopian
kings kept their independence. Aspeluta, whose
mother and sister are represented as full-blooded
Negroes, ruled from 630 to 600 B.c. Horsiatef
(560-525 b.c.) made nine expeditions against
the warlike tribes south of Meroe, and his suc-
cessor, Nastosenen (525-500 b.c.) was the one
who repelled Cambyses. He also removed the
capital from Nepata to Meroe, although Nepata
continued to be the religious capital and the
Ethiopian kings were still crowned on its golden
throne.
From the fifth to the second century b.c. we
find the wild Sudanese tribes pressing in from the
west and Greek culture penetrating from the
east. King Arg-Amen (Ergamenes) showed
1 Maciver and Wooley: Areika, p. i.
ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT
41
strong Greek influences and at the same time
began to employ the Ethiopian speech in writing
and used a new Ethiopian alphabet.
While the Ethiopian kings were still crowned
at Nepata, Meroe gradually became the real
capital and supported at one time four thousand
artisans and two hundred thousand soldiers. It
was here that the famous Candaces reigned as
queens. Pliny tells us that one Candace of the
time of Nero had had forty-four predecessors on
the throne, while another Candace figures in the
New Testament.1
It was probably this latter Candace who
warred against Rome at the time of Augustus
and received unusual consideration from her
formidable foe. The prestige of Ethiopia at
this time was considerable throughout the
world. Pseudo-Callisthenes tells an evidently
fabulous story of the visit of Alexander the
Great to Candace, Queen of Meroe, which never-
theless illustrates her fame: Candace will not
let him enter Ethiopia and says he is not to
scorn her people because they are black, for they
are whiter in soul than his white folk. She sent
him gold, maidens, parrots, sphinxes, and a crown
of emeralds and pearls. She ruled eighty tribes,
who were ready to punish those who attacked her.
The Romans continued to have so much
trouble with their Ethiopian frontier that finally,
when Semitic mulattoes appeared in the east,
the Emperor Diocletian invited the wild Sudanese
1 Acts VIII, 27.
42
THE NEGRO
tribe of Nubians (Nob ads) from the west to
repel them. These Nubians eventually em-
braced Christianity, and northern Ethiopia came
to be known in time as Nubia.
The Semitic mulattoes from the east came
from the highlands bordering the Red Sea and
Asia. On both sides this sea Negro blood is
strongly in evidence, predominant in Africa and
influential in Asia. Ludolphus, writing in the
seventeenth century, says that the Abyssinians
“are generally black, which [color] they most
admire.” Trade and war united the two shores,
and merchants have passed to and fro for thirty
centuries.
In this way Arabian, Jewish, Egyptian, Greek,
and Roman influences spread slowly upon the
Negro foundation. Early legendary history
declares that a queen, Maqueda, or Nikaula
of Sheba, a state of Central Abyssinia, visited
Solomon in 1050 b.c. and had her son Menelik
educated in Jerusalem. This was the supposed
beginning of the Axumite kingdom, the capital
of which, Axume, was a flourishing center of
trade. Ptolemy Evergetes and his successors
did much to open Abyssinia to the world, but
most of the population of that day was nomadic.
In the fourth century Byzantine influences began
to be felt, and in 330 St. Athanasius of Alexandria
consecrated Fromentius as Bishop of Ethiopia.
He tutored the heir to the Abyssinian kingdom
and began its gradual Christianization. By the
early part of the sixth century Abyssinia was
ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT
43
trading with India and Byzantium and was so
far recognized as a Christian country that the
Emperor Justinian appealed to King Kaleb to
protect the Christians in southwestern Arabia.
Kaleb conquered Yemen in 525 and held it
fifty years.
Eventually a Jewish princess, Judith, usurped
the Axumite throne; the Abyssinians were ex-
pelled from Arabia, and a long period begins
when as Gibbon says, “encompassed by the
enemies of their religion, the Ethiopians slept
for nearly a thousand years, forgetful of the world
by whom they were forgotten.” Throughout
the middle ages, however, the legend of a great
Christian kingdom hidden away in Africa per-
sisted, and the search for Prester John became
one of the world quests.
It was the expanding power of Abyssinia that
led Rome to call in the Nubians from the western
desert. The Nubians had formed a strong
league of tribes, and as the ancient kingdom of
Ethiopia declined they drove back the Abys-
sinians, who had already established themselves
at Meroe.
In the sixth century the Nubians were con-
verted to Christianity by a Byzantine priest,
and they immediately began to develop. A new
capital, Dongola, replaced Nepata and Meroe,
and by the twelfth century churches and brick
dwellings had appeared. As the Mohammedan
flood pressed up the Nile valley it was the Nu-
bians that held it back for two centuries.
44
THE NEGRO
Farther south other wild tribes pushed out oi
the Sudan and began a similar development.
Chief among these were the Fung, who fixed their
capital at Senaar, at the junction of the White
and Blue Nile. When the Mohammedan flood
finally passed over Nubia, the Fung diverted it
by declaring themselves Moslems. This left
the Fung as the dominant power in the fifteenth
century from the Three Cataracts to Fazogli and
from the Red Sea at Suakin to the White Nile.
Islam then swept on south in a great circle,
skirted the Great Lakes, and then curled back
to Somaliland, completely isolating Abyssinia.
Between the thirteenth and sixteenth centu-
ries the Egyptian Sudan became a congeries of
Mohammedan kingdoms with Arab, mulatto,
and Negro kings. Far to the west, near Lake
Chad, arose in 1520 the sultanate of Baghirmi,
which reached its highest power in the seventh
century. This dynasty was overthrown by the
Negroid Mabas, who established Wadai to the
eastward about 1640. South of Wadai lay
the 'heathen and cannibals of the Congo valley,
against which Islam never prevailed. East of
Wadai and nearer the Nile lay the kindred state
of Darfur, a Nubian nation whose sultans reigned
over two hundred years and which reached great
prosperity in the early seventeenth century under
Soliman Solon.
Before the Mohammedan power reached
Abyssinia the Portuguese pioneers had entered
the country from the east and begun to open the
ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT
45
country again to European knowledge. With-
out doubt, in the centuries of silence, a civiliza-
tion of some height had flourished in Abyssinia,
but all authentic records were destroyed by fire
in the tenth century. When the Portuguese
came, the older Axumite kingdom had fallen
and had been succeeded by a number of petty
states.
The Sudanese kingdoms of the Sudan resisted
the power of the Mameluke beys in Egypt, and
later the power of the Turks until the nineteenth
century, when the Sudan was made nominally
a part of Egypt. Continuous upheaval, war, and
conquest had by this time done their work, and
little of ancient Ethiopian culture survived except
the slave trade.
The entrance of England into Egypt, after
the building of the Suez Canal, stirred up even-
tually revolt in the Sudan, for political, economic,
and religious reasons. Led by a Sudanese Negro,
Mohammed Ahmad, who claimed to be the
Messiah (Mahdi), the Sudan arose in revolt in
1881, determined to resist a hated religion, for-
eign rule, and interference with their chief com-
merce, the trade in slaves. The Sudan was soon
aflame, and the able mulatto general, Osman
Digna, aided by revolt among the heathen Dinka,
drove Egypt and England out of the Sudan for
sixteen years. It was not until 1898 that Eng-
land reentered the Sudan and in petty revenge
desecrated the bones of the brave, even if mis-
guided, prophet.
46
THE NEGRO
Meantime this Mahdist revolt had delayed
England’s designs on Abyssinia, and the Italians,
replacing her, attempted a protectorate. Mene-
lik of Shoa, one of the smaller kingdoms of
Abyssinia, was a shrewd man of predominantly
Negro blood, and had been induced to make a
treaty with the Italians after King John had been
killed by the Mahdists. The exact terms of the
treaty were disputed, but undoubtedly the
Italians tried by this means to reduce Menelik
to vassalage. Menelik stoutly resisted, and at
the great battle of Adua, one of the decisive
battles of the modern world, the Abyssinians on
March 1, 1896, inflicted a crushing defeat on the
Italians, killing four thousand of them and cap-
turing two thousand prisoners. The empress,
Taitou, a full-blooded Negress, led some of the
charges. By this battle Abyssinia became in-
dependent.
Such in vague and general outline is the
strange story of the valley of the Nile — of
Egypt, the motherland of human culture and
“That starr’d Ethiop Queen that strove
To set her beauty’s praise above
The sea nymphs.”
CHAPTER IV
THE NIGER AND ISLAM
* The Arabian expression “Bilad es Sudan”
(Land of the Blacks) was applied to the whole
region south of the Sahara, from the Atlantic
to the Nile. It is a territory some thirty-
five hundred miles by six hundred miles, con-
taining two million square miles, and has to-day
a population of perhaps eighty million. It is
thus two-thirds the size of the United States
and quite as thickly settled. In the western
Sudan the Niger plays the same role as the Nile
in the east. In this chapter we follow the history
of the Niger.
The history of this part of Africa was probably
something as follows: primitive man, entering
Africa from Arabia, found the Great Lakes,
spread in the Nile valley, and wandered west-
ward to the Niger. Herodotus tells of certain
youths who penetrated the desert to the Niger
and found there a city of black dwarfs. Succeed-
ing migrations of Negroes and Negroids pushed
the dwarfs gradually into the inhospitable forests
and occupied the Sudan, pushing on to the At-
lantic. Here the newcomers, curling northward,
met the Mediterranean race coming down across
47
48
THE NEGRO
the western desert, while to the southward the
Negro came to the Gulf of Guinea and the thick
forests of the Congo valley. Indigenous civiliza-
tions arose on the west coast in Yoruba and
Benin, and contact of these with the Mediter-
ranean race in the desert, and with Egyptian and
Arab from the east, gave rise to centers of Negro
culture in the Sudan at Ghana and Melle and in
Songhay, Nupe, the Hausa states, and Bornu.
The history of the Sudan thus leads us back
again to Ethiopia, that strange and ancient
center of world civilization whose inhabitants in
the ancient world were considered to be the most
pious and the oldest of men. From this center
the black originators of African culture, and to
a large degree of world culture, wandered not
simply down the Nile, but also westward. These
Negroes developed the original substratum of
culture which later influences modified but never
displaced.
We know that Egyptian Pharaohs in several
cases ventured into the western Sudan and that
Egyptian influences are distinctly traceable.
Greek and Byzantine culture and Phoenician and
Carthaginian trade also penetrated, while Islam
finally made this whole land her own. Behind
all these influences, however, stood from the
first an indigenous Negro culture. The stone
figures of Sherbro, the megaliths of Gambia, the
art and industry of the west coast are all too
deep and original evidences of civilization to
be merely importations from abroad.
THE NIGER AND ISLAM
49
Nor was the Sudan the inert recipient of
foreign influence when it came. According to
credible legend, the “Great King” at Byzan-
tium imported glass, tin, silver, bronze, cut
stones, and other treasure from the Sudan. Em-
bassies were sent and states like Nupe recognized
the suzerainty of the Byzantine emperor. The
people of Nupe especially were filled with pride
when the Byzantine people learned certain kinds
of work in bronze and glass from them, and this
intercourse was only interrupted by the Moham-
medan conquest.
To this ancient culture, modified somewhat by
Byzantine and Christian influences, came Islam.
It approached from the northwest, coming
stealthily and slowly and being handed on par-
ticularly by the Mandingo Negroes. About
1000-1200 a.d. the situation was this: Ghana was
on the edge of the desert in the north, Mandingo-
land between the Niger and the Senegal in the
south and the western Sahara, Djolof was in
the west on the Senegal, and the Songhay on the
Niger in the center. The Mohammedans came
chiefly as traders and found a trade already es-
tablished. Here and there in the great cities were
districts set aside for these new merchants, and
the Mohammedans gave frequent evidence of
their respect for these black nations.
Islam did not found new states, but modified
and united Negro states already ancient; it
did not initiate new commerce, but developed
a widespread trade already established. It is,
50
THE NEGRO
as Frobenius says, “easily proved from chronicles
written in Arabic that Islam was only effective in
fact as a fertilizer and stimulant. The essential
point is the resuscitative and invigorative con-
centration of Negro power in the service of a new
era and a Moslem propaganda, as well as the
reaction thereby produced. ” 1
Early in the eighth century Islam had con-
quered North Africa and converted the Berbers.
Aided by black soldiers, the Moslems crossed
into Spain; in the following century Berber and
Arab armies crossed the west end of the Sahara
and came to Negroland. Later in the eleventh
century Arabs penetrated the Sudan and Cen-
tral Africa from the east, filtering through the
Negro tribes of Darfur, Kanem, and neighbor-
ing regions. The Arabs were too nearly akin to
Negroes to draw an absolute color line. Antar,
one of the great pre-Islamic poets of Arabia, was
the son of a black woman, and one of the great
poets at the court of Haroun al Raschid was
black. In the twelfth century a learned Negro
poet resided at Seville, and Sidjilmessa, the last
town in Lower Morocco toward the desert, was
founded in 757 by a Negro who ruled over the
Berber inhabitants. Indeed, many towns in the
Sudan and the desert were thus ruled, and felt
no incongruity in this arrangement. They say,
to be sure, that the Moors destroyed Audhoghast
because it paid tribute to the black town of
Ghana, but this was because the town was hea-
1 Frobenius: Voice of Africa, II, 359-360.
THE NIGER AND ISLAM
51
then and not because it was black. On the other
hand, there is a story that a Berber king over-
threw one of the cities of the Sudan and all the
black women committed suicide, being too proud
to allow themselves to fall into the hands of
white men.
In the west the Moslems first came into touch
with the Negro kingdom of Ghana. Here large
quantities of gold were gathered in early days,
and we have names of seventy-four rulers before
300 a.d. running through twenty-one genera-
tions. This would take us back approximately
a thousand years to 700 b.c., or about the time
that Pharaoh Necho of Egypt sent out the
Phoenician expedition which circumnavigated
Africa, and possibly before the time when Hanno,
the Carthaginian, explored the west coast of
Africa.
By the middle of the eleventh century Ghana
was the principal kingdom in the western Sudan.
Already the town had a native and a Mussulman
quarter, and was built of wood and stone with
surrounding gardens. The king had an army of
two hundred thousand and the wealth of the
country was great. A century later the king
had become Mohammedan in faith and had a
palace with sculptures and glass windows. The
great reason for this development was the desert
trade. Gold, skins, ivory, kola nuts, gums,
honey, wheat, and cotton were exported, and the
whole Mediterranean coast traded in the Sudan.
Other and lesser black kingdoms like Tekrou,
Silla, and Masina surrounded Ghana.
52
THE NEGRO
In the early part of the thirteenth century the
prestige of Ghana began to fall before the rising
Mandingan kingdom to the west. Melle, as it
was called, was founded in 1235 and formed an
open door for Moslem and Moorish traders.
The new kingdom, helped by its expanding trade,
began to grow, and Islam slowly surrounded the
older Negro culture west, north, and east.
However, a great mass of the older heathen cul-
ture, pushing itself upward from the Guinea coast,
stood firmly against Islam down to the nineteenth
century.
Steadily Mohammedanism triumphed in the
growing states which almost encircled the pro-
tagonists of ancient Atlantic culture. Man-
dingan Melle eventually supplanted Ghana in
prestige and power, after Ghana had been over-
thrown by the heathen Su Su from the south.
The territory of Melle lay southeast of Ghana
and some five hundred miles north of the Gulf of
Guinea. Its ldngs were known by the title of
Mansa, and from the middle of the thirteenth
century to the middle of the fourteenth the
Mellestine, as its dominion was called, was the
leading power in the land of the blacks. Its
greatest king, Mari Jalak (Mansa Musa), made
his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324, with a caravan
of sixty thousand persons, including twelve
thousand young slaves gowned in figured cotton
and Persian silk. He took eighty camel loads of
gold dust (worth about five million dollars) to
defray his expenses, and greatly impressed the
people of the East with his magnificence.
THE NIGER AND ISLAM
53
On his return he found that Timbuktu had
been sacked by the Mossi, but he rebuilt the
town and filled the new mosque with learned
blacks from the University of Fez. Mansa Musa
reigned twenty -five years and “was distinguished
by his ability and by the holiness of his life.
The justice of his administration was such that
the memory of it still lives.” 1 The Mellestine
preserved its preeminence until the beginning
of the sixteenth century, when the rod of Sudan-
ese empire passed to Songhay, the largest and
most famous of the black empires.
The known history of Songhay covers a thou-
sand years and three dynasties and centers in
the great bend of the Niger. There were thirty
kings of the First Dynasty, reigning from 700
to 1335. During the reign of one of these the
Songhay kingdom became the vassal kingdom
of Melle, then at the height of its glory. In
addition to this the Mossi crossed the valley,
plundered Timbuktu in 1339, and separated
Jenne, the original seat of the Songhay, from the
main empire. The sixteenth king was converted
to Mohammedanism in 1009, and after that
all the Songhay princes were Mohammedans.
Mansa Musa took two young Songhay princes
to the court of Melle to be educated in 1326.
These boys when grown ran away and founded a
new dynasty in Songhay, that of the Sonnis, in
1355. Seventeen of these kings reigned, the
last and greatest being Sonni Ah, who ascended
1 Ibn Khaldun, quoted in Lugard, p. 128.
54
THE NEGRO
the throne in 1464. Melle was at this time
declining, other cities like Jenne, with its seven
thousand villages, were rising, and the Tuaregs
(Berbers with Negro blood) had captured Tim-
buktu.
Sonni Ali was a soldier and began his career
with the conquest of Timbuktu in 1469. He
also succeeded in capturing Jenne and attacked
the Mossi and other enemies on all sides. Finally
he concentrated his forces for the destruction of
Melle and subdued nearly the whole empire on
the west bend of the Niger. In summing up Sonni
Ali’s military career the chronicle says of him,
“He surpassed all his predecessors in the num-
bers and valor of his soldiery. His conquests
were many and his renown extended from the
rising to the setting of the sun. If it is the will
of God, he will be long spoken of.” 1
Sonni Ali was a Songhay Negro whose father
was a Berber. He was succeeded by a full-
blooded black, Mohammed Abou Bekr, who had
been his prime minister. Mohammed was hailed
as “Askia” (usurper) and is best known as
Mohammed Askia. He was strictly orthodox
where Ali was rather a scoffer, and an organizer
where Ali was a warrior. On his pilgrimage to
Mecca in 1495 there was nothing of the barbaric
splendor of Mansa Musa, but a brilliant group
of scholars and holy men with a small escort of
fifteen hundred soldiers and nine hundred thou-
sand dollars in gold. He stopped and consulted
1 Quoted in Lugard, p. 180.
THE NIGER AND ISLAM
55
with scholars and politicians and studied matters
of taxation, weights and measures, trade, religious
tolerance, and manners. In Cairo, where he was
invested by the reigning caliph of Egypt, he may
have heard of the struggle of Europe for the
trade of the Indies, and perhaps of the parceling
of the new world between Portugal and Spain.
He returned to the Sudan in 1497, instituted a
standing army of slaves, undertook a holy war
against the indomitable Mossi, and finally
marched against the Hausa. He subdued these
cities and even imposed the rule of black men
on the Berber town of Agades, a rich city of
merchants and artificers with stately mansions.
In fine Askia, during his reign, conquered and
consolidated an empire two thousand miles long
by one thousand wide at its greatest diameters;
a territory as large as all Europe. The territory
was divided into four vice royalties, and the
system of Melle, with its semi-independent native
dynasties, wras carried out. His empire extended
from the Atlantic to Lake Chad and from the
salt mines of Tegazza and the town of Augila in
the north to the 10th degree of north latitude
toward the south.
It was a six months’ journey across the em-
pire and, it is said, “ he was obeyed with as much
docility on the farthest limits of the empire as he
was in his own palace, and there reigned every-
where great plenty and absolute peace.” 1 The
University of Sankore became a center of learn-
1 Es-Sa’di, quoted by Lugard, p. 199.
56
THE NEGRO
ing in correspondence with Egypt and North
Africa and had a swarm of black Sudanese stu-
dents. Law, literature, grammar, geography,
and surgery were studied. Askia the Great
reigned thirty-six years, and his dynasty con-
tinued on the throne until after the Moorish
conquest in 1591.
Meanwhile, to the eastward, two powerful
states appeared. They never disputed the mili-
tary supremacy of Songhay, but their industrial
development was marvelous. The Hausa states
were formed by seven original cities, of which
Kano was the oldest and Katsena the most
famous. Their greatest leaders, Mohammed
Rimpa and Ahmadu Kesoke, arose in the fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries. The land was
subject to the Songhay, but the cities became
industrious centers of smelting, weaving, and
dyeing. Katsena especially, in the middle of
the sixteenth century, is described as a place
thirteen or fourteen miles in circumference,
divided into quarters for strangers, for visitors
from various other states, and for the different
trades and industries, as saddlers, shoemakers,
dyers, etc.
Beyond the Hausa states and bordering on
Lake Chad was Bornu. The people of Bornu had
a large infiltration of Berber blood, but were
predominantly Negro. Berber mulattoes had
been kings in early days, but they were soon
replaced by black men. Under the early kings,
who can be traced back to the third century,
THE NIGER AND ISLAM
57
these people had ruled nearly all the territory
between the Nile and Lake Chad. The country
was known as Kanem, and the pagan dynasty of
Dugu reigned there from the middle of the ninth
to the end of the eleventh century. Mohamme-
danism was introduced from Egypt at the end of
the eleventh century, and under the Mohamme-
dan kings Kanem became one of the first powers
of the Sudan. By the end of the twelfth century
the armies of Kanem were very powerful and its
rulers were known as “Kings of Kanem and
Lords of Bornu.” In the thirteenth century the
kings even dared to invade the southern country
down toward the valley of the Congo.
Meantime great things were happening in the
world beyond the desert, the ocean, and the
Nile. Arabian Mohammedanism had succumbed
to the wild fanaticism of the Seljukian Turks.
These new conquerors were not only firmly
planted at the gates of Vienna, but had swept
the shores of the Mediterranean and sent all
Europe scouring the seas for their lost trade
connections with the riches of India. Religious
zeal, fear of conquest, and commercial greed in-
flamed Europe against the Mohammedan and
led to the discovery of a new world, the riches of
which poured first on Spain. Oppression of the
Moors followed, and in 1502 they were driven
back into Africa, despoiled and humbled. Here
the Spaniards followed and harassed them and
here the Turks, fighting the Christians, captured
the Mediterranean ports and cut the Moors off
58
THE NEGRO
permanently from Europe. In the slow years that
followed, huddled in Northwest Africa, they
became a decadent people and finally cast their
eyes toward Negroland.
The Moors in Morocco had come to look upon
the Sudan as a gold mine, and knew that the
Sudan was especially dependent upon salt. In
1545 Morocco claimed the principal salt mines at
Tegazza, but the reigning Askia refused to recog-
nize the claim.
When the Sultan Elmansour came to the
throne of Morocco, he increased the efficiency
of his army by supplying it with fire arms and
cannon. Elmansour determined to attack the
Sudan and sent four hundred men under Pasha
Djouder, who left Morocco in 1590. The
Songhay, with their bows and arrows, were help-
less against powder and shot, and they were
defeated at Tenkadibou April 12, 1591. Askia
Ishak, the king, offered terms, and Djouder Pasha
referred them to Morocco. The sultan, angry with
his general’s delay, deposed him and sent an-
other, who crushed and treacherously murdered
the king and set up a puppet. Thereafter there
were two Askias, one under the Moors at Tim-
buktu and one who maintained himself in the
Hausa states, which the Moors could not subdue.
Anarchy reigned in Songhay. The Moors tried
to put down disorder with a high hand, drove
out and murdered the distinguished men of
Timbuktu, and as a result let loose a riot of
robbery and decadence throughout the Sudan.
THE NIGER AND ISLAM
59
Pasha now succeeded pasha with revolt and mis-
rule until in 1612 the soldiers elected their own
pasha and deliberately shut themselves up in the
Sudan by cutting off approach from the north.
Hausaland and Bornu were still open to Tur-
kish and Mohammedan influence from the east,
and the Gulf of Guinea to the slave trade from
the south, but the face of the finest Negro civiliza-
tion the modern world had ever produced was
veiled from Europe and given to the defilement
of wild Moorish soldiers. In 1623 it is written
“excesses of every kind are now committed un-
checked by the soldiery,” and “the country is
profoundly convulsed and oppressed.” 1 The
Tuaregs marched down from the desert and
deprived the Moors of many of the principal
towns. The rest of the empire of the Songhay
was by the end of the eighteenth century divided
among separate Moorish chiefs, who bought
supplies from the Negro peasantry and were
“at once the vainest, proudest, and perhaps the
most bigoted, ferocious, and intolerant of all the
nations of the south.” 2 They lived a nomadic
life, plundering the Negroes. To such depths
did the mighty Songhay fall.
As the Songhay declined a new power arose in
the nineteenth century, the Fula. The Fula,
who vary in race from Berber mulattoes to
full-blooded Negroes, may be the result of a
westward migration of some people like the
1 Lugard, p. 378.
1 Mungo Park, quoted in Lugard, p. 374.
60
THE NEGRO
“Leukosethiopi” of Pliny, or they may have
arisen from the migration of Berber mulattoes in
the western oases, driven south by Romans and
Arabs.
These wandering herdsmen lived on the Senegal
River and the ocean in very early times and
were not heard of until the nineteenth century.
By this time they had changed to a Negro or
dark mulatto people and lived scattered in small
communities between the Atlantic and Darfur.
They were without political union or national
sentiment, but were all Mohammedans. Then
came a sudden change, and led by a religious fa-
natic, these despised and persecuted people
became masters of the central Sudan. They
were the ones who at last broke down that great
wedge of resisting Atlantic culture, after it had
been undermined and disintegrated by the
American slave trade.
Thus Islam finally triumphed in the Sudan and
the ancient culture combined with the new. In
the Sudan to-day one may find evidences of
the union of two classes of people. The rep-
resentatives of the older civilization dwell as
peasants in small communities, carrying on in-
dustries and speaking a large number of different
languages. With them or above them is the
ruling Mohammedan caste, speaking four main
languages: Mandingo, Hausa, Fula, and Arabic.
These latter form the state builders. Negro
blood predominates among both classes, but
naturally there is more Berber blood among the
Mohammedan invaders.
THE NIGER AND ISLAM
61
Europe during the middle ages had some knowl-
edge of these movements in the Sudan and
Africa. Melle and Songhay appear on medieval
maps. In literature we have many allusions:
the mulatto king, Feirifis, was one of Wolfram
von Eschenbach’s heroes; Prester John furnished
endless lore; Othello, the warrior, and the black
king represented by medieval art as among the
three wise men, and the various black Virgin
Marys’ all show legendary knowledge of what
African civilization was at that time doing.
It is a curious commentary on modern prejudice
that most of this splendid history of civilization
and uplift is unknown to-day, and men confi-
dently assert that Negroes have no history.
CHAPTER V
GUINEA AND CONGO
One of the great cities of the Sudan was Jenne.
The chronicle says “that its markets are held
every day of the week and its populations are very
enormous. Its seven thousand villages are so
near to one another that the chief of Jenne has
no need of messengers. If he wishes to send a
note to Lake Dibo, for instance, it is cried from
the gate of the town and repeated from village to
village, by which means it reaches its destination
almost instantly.” 1
From the name of this city we get the modern
name Guinea, which is used to-day to designate
the country contiguous to the great gulf of that
name — a territory often referred to in general as
West Africa. Here, reaching from the mouth of
the Gambia to the mouth of the Niger, is a coast
of six hundred miles, where a marvelous drama of
world history has been enacted. The coast and
its hinterland comprehends many well-known
names. First comes ancient Guinea, then, mod-
ern Sierra Leone and Liberia; then follow the
various “coasts” of ancient traffic — the grain,
ivory, gold, and slave coasts — with the adjoining
1 Quoted in DuBois: Timbuktu.
62
GUINEA AND CONGO
63
territories of Ashanti, Dahomey, Lagos, and
Benin, and farther back such tribal and territo-
rial names as those of the Mandingoes, Yorubas,
the Mossi, Nupe, Borgu, and others.
Recent investigation makes it certain that an
ancient civilization existed on this coast which
may have gone back as far as three thousand
years before Christ. Frobenius, perhaps fanci-
fully, identified this African coast with the Atlan-
tis of the Greeks and as part of that great western
movement in human culture, “ beyond the pillars
of Hercules,” which thirteen centuries before
Christ strove with Egypt and the East. It is, at
any rate, clear that ancient commerce reached
down the west coast. The Phoenicians, 600 b.c.,
and the Carthaginians, a century or more later,
record voyages, and these may have been at-
tempted revivals of still more ancient inter-
course.
These coasts at some unknown prehistoric
period were peopled from the Niger plateau
toward the north and west by the black West
African type of Negro, while along the west end
of the desert these Negroes mingled with the
Berbers, forming various Negroid races.
Movement and migration is evident along this
coast in ancient and modern times. The Yoruba-
Benin-Dahomey peoples were among the earliest
arrivals, with their remarkable art and industry,
which places them in some lines of technique
abreast with the modern world. Behind them
came the Mossi from the north, and many other
64
THE NEGRO
peoples in recent days have filtered through,
like the Limba and Temni of Sierra Leone and
the Agni-Ashanti, who moved from Borgu some
two thousand years ago to the Gold and Ivory
coasts.
We have already noted in the main the history
of black men along the wonderful Niger and
seen how, pushing up from the Gulf of Guinea,
a powerful wedge of ancient culture held back
Islam for a thousand years, now victorious, now
stubbornly disputing every inch of retreat. The
center of this culture lay probably, in oldest time,
above the Bight of Benin, along the Slave Coast,
and reached east, west, and north. We trace it
to-day not only in the remarkable tradition of
the natives, but in stone monuments, architec-
ture, industrial and social organization, and
works of art in bronze, glass, and terra cotta.
Benin art has been practiced without interrup-
tion for centuries, and Von Luschan says that it
is “of extraordinary significance that by the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a local and
monumental art had been learned in Benin which
in many respects equaled European art and
developed a technique of the very highest accom-
plishment.” 1
Summing up Yoruban civilization, Frobenius
concluded that “the technical summit of that
civilization was reached in the terra-cotta in-
dustry, and that the most important achieve-
1 Von Luschan: Verhandlungen der berliner Getellschaft
fur Anthropologic, etc., 1898.
GUINEA AND CONGO
65
ments in art were not expressed in stone, but in
fine clay baked in the furnace; that hollow casting
was thoroughly known, too, and practiced by
these people; that iron was mainly used for
decoration; that, whatever their purpose, they
kept their glass beads in stoneware urns within
their own locality, and that they manufactured
both earthen and glass ware; that the art of
weaving was highly developed among them;
that the stone monuments, it is true, show some
dexterity in handling and are so far instructive,
but in other respects evidence a cultural condi-
tion insufficiently matured to grasp the utility
of stone monumental material; and, above all,
that the then great and significant idea of the
universe as imaged in the Templum was current
in those days.” 1
Effort has naturally been made to ascribe
this civilization to white people. First it was
ascribed to Portuguese influence, but much of
it is evidently older than the Portuguese dis-
covery. Egypt and India have been evoked
and Greece and Carthage. But all these explana-
tions are far-fetched. If ever a people exhibited
unanswerable evidence of indigenous civiliza-
tion, it is the west-coast Africans. Undoubtedly
they adapted much that came to them, utilized
new ideas, and grew from contact. But their
art and culture is Negro through and through.
Yoruba forms one of the three city groups of
West Africa; another is around Timbuktu, and a
1 Frobenius: Voice of Africa, Vol. I.
66
THE NEGRO
third in the Hausa states. The Timbuktu cities
have from five to fifteen hundred towns, while the
Yoruba cities have one hundred and fifty thou-
sand inhabitants and more. The Hausa cities
are many of them important, but few are as large
as the Yoruba cities and they lie farther apart.
All three centers, however, are connected with
the Niger, and the group nearest the coast —
that is, the Yoruba cities — has the greatest
numbers of towns, the most developed architec-
tural styles, and the oldest institutions.
The Yoruba cities are not only different from
the Sudanese in population, but in their social
relations. The Sudanese cities were influenced
from the desert and the Mediterranean, and
form nuclei of larger surrounding monarchial
states. The Yoruba cities, on the other hand,
remained comparatively autonomous organiza-
tions down to modern times, and their relative
importance changed from time to time without
developing an imperialistic idea or subordinating
the group to one overpowering city.
This social and industrial state of the Yorubas
formerly spread and wielded great influence.
We find Yoruba reaching out and subduing states
like Nupe toward the northward. But the in-
dustrial democracy and city autonomy of Yoruba
lent itself indifferently to conquest, and the
state fell eventually a victim to the fanatical
Fula Mohammedans and was made a part of
the modern sultanate of Gando.
West of Yoruba on the lower courses of the
GUINEA AND CONGO
67
Niger is Benin, an ancient state which in 1897
traced its twenty-three kings back one thousand
years; some legends even named a line of sixty
kings. It seems probable that Benin developed
the imperial idea and once extended its rule into
the Congo valley. Later and also to the west of
the Yoruba come two states showing a fiercer
and ruder culture, Dahomey and Ashanti. The
state of Dahomey was founded by Tacondomi
early in the seventeenth century, and developed
into a fierce and bloody tyranny with wholesale
murder. The king had a body of two thousand
to five thousand Amazons renowned for their
bravery and armed with rifles. The kingdom
was overthrown by the French in 1892-93.
Under Sai Tutu, Ashanti arose to power in the
seventeenth century. A military aristocracy with
cruel blood sacrifices was formed. By 1816 the
king had at his disposal two hundred thousand
soldiers. The Ashanti power was crushed by the
English in the war of 1873-74.
In these states and in later years in Benin the
whole character of west-coast culture seems to
change. In place of the Yoruban culture, with
its city democracy, its elevated religious ideas,
its finely organized industry, and its noble art,
came Ashanti and Dahomey. What was it
that changed the character of the west coast
from this to the orgies of war and blood sacrifice
which we read of later in these lands?
There can be but one answer: the slave trade.
Not simply the sale of men, but an organized
68
THE NEGRO
traffic of such proportions and widely organized
ramifications as to turn the attention and ener-
gies of men from nearly all other industries, en-
courage war and all the cruelest passions of war,
and concentrate this traffic in precisely that part
of Africa farthest from the ancient Mediterra-
nean lines of trade.
We need not assume that the cultural change
was sudden or absolute. Ancient Yoruba had
the cruelty of a semi-civilized land, but it was
not dominant or tyrannical. Modern Benin and
Dahomey showed traces of skill, culture, and
industry along with inexplicable cruelty and
bloodthirstiness. But it was the slave trade that
turned the balance and set these lands back-
ward. Dahomey was the last word in a series of
human disasters which began with the defeat
of the Askias at Tenkadibou.1
From the middle of the fifteenth to the last
half of the nineteenth centuries the American
slave trade centered in Guinea and devastated
the coast morally, socially, and physically.
European rum and fire arms were traded for
human beings, and it was not until 1787 that any
measures were taken to counteract this terrible
scourge. In that year the idea arose of repa-
triating stolen Negroes on that coast and estab-
lishing civilized centers to supplant the slave
trade. About four hundred Negroes from Eng-
land were sent to Sierra Leone, to whom the
promoters considerately added sixty white prosti-
1 Cf. p. 58.
GUINEA AND CONGO
69
tutes as wives. The climate on the low coast,
however, was so deadly that new recruits were
soon needed. An American Negro, Thomas
Peters, who had served as sergeant under Sir
Henry Clinton in the British army in America,
went to England seeking an allotment of land
for his fellows. The Sierra Leone Company wel-
comed him and offered free passage and land in
Sierra Leone to the Negroes of Nova Scotia.
As a result fifteen vessels sailed with eleven hun-
dred and ninety Negroes in 1792. Arriving in
Africa, they found the chief white man in con-
trol there so drunk that he soon died of delirium
tremens. John Clarkson, however, brother of
Thomas Clarkson, the abolitionist, eventually
took the lead, founded Freetown, and the colony
began its checkered career. In 1896 the colony
was saved from insurrection by the exiled Ma-
roon Negroes from Jamaica. After 1833, when
emancipation in English colonies took place, se-
verer measures against the slave trade was pos-
sible and the colony began to grow. To-day its
imports and exports amount to fifteen million
dollars a year.
Liberia was a similar American experiment.
In 1816 American philanthropists decided that
slavery was bound to die out, but that the prob-
lem lay in getting rid of the freed Negroes, of
which there were then two hundred thousand in
the United States. Accordingly the American
Colonization Society was proposed this year
and founded January 1, 1817, with Bushrod
70
THE NEGRO
Washington as President. It was first thought to
encourage migration to Sierra Leone, and eighty-
eight Negroes were sent, but they were not wel-
comed. As a result territory was bought in the
present confines of Liberia, December 15, 1821,
and colonists began to arrive. A little later an
African depot for recaptured slaves taken in the
contraband slave trade, provided for in the Act
of 1819, was established and an agent was sent
to Africa to form a settlement. Gradually this
settlement was merged with the settlement of
the Colonization Society, and from this union
Liberia was finally evolved.
The last white governor of Liberia died in
1841 and was succeeded by the first colored
governor, Joseph J. Roberts, a Virginian. The
total population in 1843 was about twenty-seven
hundred and ninety, and with this as a beginning
in 1847 Governor Roberts declared the inde-
pendence of the state. The recognition of Liberian
independence by all countries except the United
States followed in 1849. The United States, not
wishing to receive a Negro minister, did not recog-
nize Liberia until 1862.
No sooner was the independence of Liberia
announced than England and France began a
long series of aggressions to limit her territory
and sovereignty. Considerable territory was
lost by treaty, and in the effort to get capital
to develop the rest, Liberia was saddled with
a debt of four hundred thousand dollars, of which
she received less than one hundred thousand
GUINEA AND CONGO
71
dollars in actual cash. Finally the Liberians
turned to the United States for capital and pro-
tection. As a result the Liberian customs have
been put under international control and Major
Charles Young, the ranking Negro officer in
the United States army, with several colored as-
sistants, has been put in charge of the making of
roads and drilling a constabulary to keep order
in the interior.
To-day Liberia has an area of forty thousand
square miles, about three hundred and fifty
miles of coast fine, and an estimated total popu-
lation of two million of which fifty thousand are
civilized. The revenue amounted in 1913 to
$531,500. The imports in 1912 were $1,667,857
and the exports $1,199,152. The latter con-
sisted chiefly of rubber, palm oil and kernels,
coffee, piassava fiber, ivory, ginger, camwood,
and arnotto.
Perhaps Liberia’s greatest citizen was the late
Edward Wilmot Blyden, who migrated in early
life from the Danish West Indies and became
a prophet of the renaissance of the Negro race.
Turning now from Guinea we pass down the
west coast. In 1482 Diego Cam of Portugal,
sailing this coast, set a stone at the mouth of a
great river which he called “The Mighty,” but
which eventually came to be known by the name
of the powerful Negro kingdom through which
it flowed — the Congo.
We must think of the valley of the Congo with
its intricate interlacing of water routes and jungle
72
THE NEGRO
of forests as a vast caldron shut away at first
from the African world by known and unknown
physical hindrances. Then it was penetrated by
the tiny red dwarfs and afterward horde after
horde of tall black men swirled into the valley
like a maelstrom, moving usually from north to
east and from south to west.
The Congo valley became, therefore, the center
of the making of what we know to-day as the
Bantu nations. They are not a unified people,
but a congeries of tribes of considerable physical
diversity, united by the compelling bond of
language and other customs imposed on the
conquered by invading conquerors.
The history of these invasions we must to-day
largely imagine. Between two and three thou-
sand years ago the wilder tribes of Negroes began
to move out of the region south or southeast of
Lake Chad. This was always a land of shadows
and legends, where fearful cannibals dwelt and
where no Egyptian or Ethiopian or Sudanese
armies dared to go. It is possible, however,
that pressure from civilization in the Nile valley
and rising culture around Lake Chad was at this
time reenforced by expansion of the Yoruba-
Benin culture on the west coast. Perhaps, too,
developing culture around the Great Lakes in
the east beckoned or the riotous fertility of the
Congo valleys became known. At any rate the
movement commenced, now by slow stages, now
in wild forays. There may have been a pre-
liminary movement from east to west to the Gulf
GUINEA AND CONGO
73
of Guinea. The main movement, however, was
eastward, skirting the Congo forests and passing
down by the Victoria Nyanza and Lake Tangan-
yika. Here two paths beckoned: the lakes and
the sea to the east, the Congo to the west. A
great stream of men swept toward the ocean
and, dividing, turned northward and fought its
way down the Nile valley and into the Abys-
sinian highlands; another branch turned south
and approached the Zambesi, where we shall
meet it again.
Another horde of invaders turned westward
and entered the valley of the Congo in three
columns. The northern column moved along
the Lualaba and Congo rivers to the Cameroons;
the second column became the industrial and
state-building Luba and Lunda peoples in the
southern Congo valley and Angola; while the
third column moved into Damaraland and
mingled with Bushman and Hottentot.
In the Congo valley the invaders settled in
village and plain, absorbed such indigenous in-
habitants as they found or drove them deeper
into the forest, and immediately began to develop
industry and political organization. They became
skilled agriculturists, raising in some localities
a profusion of cereals, fruit, and vegetables such
as manioc, maize, yams, sweet potatoes, ground
nuts, sorghum, gourds, beans, peas, bananas,
and plantains. Everywhere they showed skill in
mining and the welding of iron, copper, and other
metals. They made weapons, wire and ingots.
74
THE NEGRO
cloth, and pottery, and a widespread system of
trade arose. Some tribes extracted rubber from
the talamba root; others had remarkable breeds
of fowl and cattle, and still others divided their
people by crafts into farmers, smiths, boat build-
ers, warriors, cabinet makers, armorers, and
speakers. Women here and there took part in
public assemblies and were rulers in some cases.
Large towns were built, some of which required
hours to traverse from end to end.
Many tribes developed intelligence of a high
order. Wissmann called the Ba Luba “a nation
of thinkers.” Bateman found them “thoroughly
and unimpeachably honest, brave to foolhardi-
ness, and faithful to each other and to their
superiors.” One of their kings, Calemba, “a
really princely prince,” Bateman says would
“amongst any people be a remarkable and in-
deed in many respects a magnificent man.” 1
These beginnings of human culture were,
however, peculiarly vulnerable to invading hosts
of later comers. There were no natural protect-
ing barriers like the narrow Nile valley or the
Kong mountains or the forests below Lake Chad.
Once the pathways to the valleys were open and
for hundreds of years the newcomers kept arriv-
ing, especially from the welter of tribes south of
the Sudan and west of the Nile, which rising
culture beyond kept in unrest and turmoil.
Against these intruders there was but one de-
fense, the State. State building was thus forced
1 Keane: Africa, II, 117-118.
GUINEA AND CONGO
75
on the Congo valley. How early it started we
cannot say, but when the Portuguese arrived in
the fifteenth century, there had existed for cen-
turies a large state among the Ba-Congo, with
its capital at the city now known as San Salvador.
The Negro Mfumu, or emperor, was eventually
induced to accept Christianity. His sons and
many young Negroes of high birth were taken
to Portugal to be educated. There several were
raised to the Catholic priesthood and one be-
came bishop; others distinguished themselves
at the universities. Thus suddenly there arose
a Catholic kingdom south of the valley of the
Congo, which lasted three centuries, but was
partially overthrown by invading barbarians
from the interior in the seventeenth century.
A king of Congo still reigns as pensioner of
Portugal, and on the coast to-day are the re-
mains of the kingdom in the civilized blacks and
mulattoes, who are intelligent traders and boat
builders.
Meantime the Luba-Lunda people to the
eastward founded Kantanga and other states,
and in the sixteenth century the larger and more
ambitious realm of the Mwata Yanvo. The last
of the fourteen riders of this line was feudal lord
of about three hundred chiefs, who paid him
tribute in ivory, skins, corn, cloth, and salt.
His territory included about one hundred thou-
sand square miles and two million or more in-
habitants. Eventually this state became tom
by internal strife and revolt, especially by at-
76
THE NEGRO
tacks from the south across the Congo-Zambesi
divide.
Farther north, among the Ba-Lolo and the
Ba-Songo, the village policy persisted and the
cannibals of the northeast pressed down on the
more settled tribes. The result was a curious
blending of war and industry, artistic tastes and
savage customs.
The organized slave trade of the Arabs pene-
trated the Congo valley in the sixteenth century
and soon was aiding all the forces of unrest and
turmoil. Industry was deranged and many
tribes forced to take refuge in caves and other
hiding places.
Here, as on the west coast, disintegration and
retrogression followed, for as the American
traffic lessened, the Arabian traffic increased.
When, therefore, Stanley opened the Congo
valley to modern knowledge, Leopold II of Bel-
gium conceived the idea of founding here a free
international state which was to bring civiliza-
tion to the heart of Africa. Consequently there
was formed in 1878 an international committee
to study the region. Stanley was finally com-
missioned to inquire as to the best way of in-
troducing European trade and culture. “I am
charged,” he said, “to open and keep open, if
possible, all such districts and countries as I
may explore, for the benefit of the commercial
world. The mission is supported by a phil-
anthropic society, which numbers nobleminded
men of several nations. It is not a religious
GUINEA AND CONGO
77
society, but my instructions are entirely of that
spirit. No violence must be used, and wherever
rejected, the mission must withdraw to seek
another field.” 1
The Bula Matadi or Stone Breaker, as the
natives called Stanley, threw himself energeti-
cally into the work and had by 1881 built a road
past the falls to the plateau, where thousands
of miles of river navigation were thus opened.
Stations were established, and by 1884 Stanley
returned armed with four hundred and fifty
“treaties” with the native chiefs, and the new
“State” appealed to the world for recognition.
The United States first recognized the “Congo
Free State,” which was at last made a sovereign
power under international guarantees by the
Congress of Berlin in the year 1885, and Leopold
II was chosen its king. The state had an area
of about nine hundred thousand square miles,
with a population of about thirty million.
One of the first tasks before the new state was
to check the Arab slave traders. The Arabs had
hitherto acted as traders and middlemen along
the upper Congo, and when the English and
Congo state overthrew Mzidi, the reigning king
in the Kantanga country, a general revolt of the
Arabs and mulattoes took place. For a time,
1892-93, the whites were driven out, but in a
year or two the Arabs and their allies were sub-
dued.
Humanity and commerce, however, did not
1 The Congo, I, Chap. III.
78
THE NEGRO
replace the Arab slave traders. Rather European
greed and serfdom were substituted. The land
was confiscated by the state and farmed out to
private Belgian corporations. The wilder canni-
bal tribes were formed into a militia to prey on the
industrious, who were taxed with specific amounts
of ivory and rubber, and scourged and mutilated
if they failed to pay. Harris declares that
King Leopold’s regime meant the death of
twelve million natives.
“Europe was staggered at the Leopoldian
atrocities, and they were terrible indeed; but
what we, who were behind the scenes, felt most
keenly was the fact that the real catastrophe in
the Congo was desolation and murder in the
larger sense. The invasion of family life, the
ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the
shattering of every tribal law, the introduction
of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of
the people dumb with horror — in a word, a
veritable avalanche of filth and immorality
overwhelmed the Congo tribes.” 1
So notorious did the exploitation and misrule
become that Leopold was forced to take measures
toward reform, and finally in 1909 the Free
State became a Belgian colony. Some reforms
have been inaugurated and others may follow,
but the valley of the Congo will long stand as
a monument of shame to Christianity and Eu-
ropean civilization.
1 Harris: Dawn in Africa.
CHAPTER VI
THE GREAT LAKES AND ZIMBABWE
We have already seen how a branch of the
conquering Bantus turned eastward by the
Great Lakes and thus reached the sea and even-
tually both the Nile and South Africa.
This brought them into the ancient and myste-
rious land far up the Nile, south of Ethiopia.
Here lay the ancient Punt of the Egyptians
(whether we place it in Somaliland or, as seems
far more likely, around the Great Lakes) and
here, as the Egyptians thought, their civilization
began. The earliest inhabitants of the land were
apparently of the Bushman or Hottentot type
of Negro. These were gradually pushed south-
ward and westward by the intrusion of the
Nilotic Negroes. Five thousand years before
Christ the mulatto Egyptians were in the Nile
valley below the First Cataract. The Negroes
were in the Nile valley down as far as the Second
Cataract and between the First and Second Cata-
racts were Negroes into whose veins Semitic blood
had penetrated more or less. These mixed ele-
ments became the ancestors of the modem Somali,
Gala, Bishari, and Beja and spread Negro blood
into Arabia beyond the Red Sea. The Nilotic
79
80
THE NEGRO
Negroes to the south early became great traders
in ivory, gold, leopard skins, gums, beasts, birds,
and slaves, and they opened up systematic
trade between Egypt and the Great Lakes.
The result was endless movement and migration
both in ancient and modern days, which makes the
cultural history of the Great Lakes region very
difficult to understand. Three great elements are,
however, clear: first, the Egyptian element, by
the northward migration of the Negro ancestors
of predynastic Egypt and the southern conquests
and trade of dynastic Egypt; second, the Sem-
itic influence from Arabia and Persia; third, the
Negro influences from western and central
Africa.
The migration of the Bantu is the first clearly
defined movement of modern times. As we have
shown, they began to move southward at least
a thousand years before .Christ, skirting the
Congo forests and wandering along the Great
Lakes and down to the Zambesi. What did
they find in this land?
We do not know certainly, but from what we do
know we may reconstruct the situation in this
way: the primitive culture of the Hottentots of
Punt had been further developed by them and by
other stronger Negro stocks until it reached a
highly developed culture. Widespread agri-
culture, and mining of gold, silver, and precious
stones started a trade that penetrated to Asia
and North Africa. This may have been the
source of the gold of the Ophir.
GREAT LAKES AND ZYMBABWE 81
The state that thus arose became in time
strongly organized; it employed slave labor in
crushing the hard quartz, sinking pits, and carry-
ing underground galleries; it carried out a sys-
tem of irrigation and built stone buildings and
fortifications. There exists to-day mahy re-
mains of these building operations in the Kala-
hari desert and in northern Rhodesia. Five
hundred groups, covering over an area of one
hundred and fifty thousand square miles, lie be-
tween the Limpopo and Zambesi rivers. Min-
ing operations have been carried on in these plains
for generations, and one estimate is that at least
three hundred and seventy-five million dollars’
worth of gold had been extracted. Some have
thought that the older workings must date back
to one or even three thousand years before the
Christian era.
“There are other mines,” writes De Barros in
the seventeenth century,1 “in a district called
Toroa, which is otherwise known as the kingdom
of Butua, whose ruler is a prince, by name Burrow,
a vassal of Benomotapa. This land is near the
other which we said consisted of extensive plains,
and those ruins are the oldest that are known in
that region. They are all in a plain, in the middle
of which stands a square fortress, all of dressed
stones within and without, well wrought and
of marvelous size, without any lime showing the
joinings, the walls of which are over twenty-five
hands thick, but the height is not so great com-
1 Quoted in Bent: Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, pp. 203 ff.
82
THE NEGRO
pared to the thickness. And above the gateway
of that edifice is an inscription which some
Moorish [Arab] traders who were there could not
read, nor say what writing it was. All these
structures the people of this country call Sym-
baoe [Zymbabwe], which with them means a
court, for every place where Benomotapa stays
is so called.”
Later investigation has shown that these
buildings were in many cases carefully planned
and built fortifications. At Niekerk, for in-
stance, nine or ten hills are fortified on concen-
tric walls thirty to fifty feet in number, with a
place for the village at the top. The buildings
are forts, miniature citadels, and also workshops
and cattle kraals. Iron implements and hand-
some pottery were found here, and close to the
Zambesi there are extraordinary fortifications.
Farther south at Inyanga there is less strong
defense, and at Umtali there are no fortifications,
showing that builders feared invasion from the
north.
These people worked in gold, silver, tin, copper,
and bronze and made beautiful pottery. There
is evidence of religious significance in the build-
ings, and what is called the temple was the royal
residence and served as a sort of acropolis. The
surrounding residences in the valley were evi-
dently occupied by wealthy traders and were not
fortified. Here the gold was received from sur-
rounding districts and bartered with traders.
As usual there have been repeated attempts
GREAT LAKES AND ZYMBABWE 83
to find an external and especially an Asiatic
origin for this culture. So far, however, arche-
ological research seems to confirm its African
origin. The implements, weapons, and art are
characteristically African and there is no evident
connection with outside sources. How far back
this civilization dates it is difficult to say, a
great deal depending upon the dating of the iron
age in South Africa. If it was the same as in the
Mediterranean regions, the earliest limit was
1000 b.c.; it might, however, have been much
earlier, especially if, as seems probable, the use
of iron originated in Africa. On the other hand
the culmination of this culture has been placed
by some as late as the modern middle ages.
What was it that overthrew this civilization?
Undoubtedly the same sort of raids of barbarous
warriors that we have known in our day. For
instance, in 1570 there came upon the country of
Mozambique, farther up the coast, “such an
inundation of pagans that they could not be
numbered. They came from that part of Mono-
motapa where is the great lake from which spring
these great rivers. They left no other signs of
the towns they passed but the heaps of ruins and
the bones of inhabitants.” So, too, it is told how
the Zimbas came, “a strange people never before
seen there, who, leaving their own country,
traversed a great part of this Ethiopia like a
scourge of God, destroying every living thing
they came across. They were twenty thousand
strong and marched without children or women,”
84
THE NEGRO
just as four hundred years later the Zulu impi
marched. Again in 1602 a horde of people came
from the interior called the Cabires, or cannibals.
They entered the kingdom of Monomotapa, and
the reigning king, being weak, was in great terror.
Thus gradually the Monomotapa fell, and its
power was scattered until the Kaffir-Zulu raids
of our day.1
The Arab writer, Macoudi, in the tenth century
visited the East African coast somewhere north
of the equator. He found the Indian Sea at that
time frequented by Arab and Persian vessels,
but there were no Asiatic settlements on the
African shore. The Bantu, or as he calls them,
Zenji, inhabited the country as far south as Sofala,
where they bordered upon the Bushmen. These
Bantus were under a ruler with the dynastic
title of Waklimi. He was paramount over all
the other tribes of the north and could put
three hundred thousand men in the field. They
used oxen as beasts of burden and the country
produced gold in abundance, while panther skin
was largely used for clothing. Ivory was sold
to Asia and the Bantu used iron for personal
adornment instead of gold or silver. They rode
on their oxen, which ran with great speed, and
they ate millet and honey and the flesh of animals.
Inland among the Bantu arose later the line
of rulers called the Monomotapa among the
gifted Makalanga. Their state was very ex-
1 Cf. “Ethiopia Oriental,” by J. Dos Santos, in Theal’s
Records of South Africa, Vol. VII.
GREAT LAKES AND ZYMBABWE 85
tensive, ranging from the coast far into the inte-
rior and from Mozambique down to the Limpopo.
It was strongly organized, with feudatory allied
states, and carried on an extensive commerce
by means of the traders on the coast. The kings
were converted to nominal Christianity by the
Portuguese.
There are indications of trade between Nupe
in West Africa and Sofala on the east coast, and
certainly trade between Asia and East Africa
is earlier than the beginning of the Christian
era. The Asiatic traders settled on the coast and
by means of mulatto and Negro merchants
brought Central Africa into contact with Arabia,
India, China, and Malaysia.
The coming of the Asiatics was in this wise:
Zaide, great-grandson of Ali, nephew and son-
in-law of Mohammed, was banished Com Arabia
as a heretic. He passed over to Africa and formed
temporary settlements. His people mingled with
the blacks, and the resulting mulatto traders,
known as the Emoxaidi, seem to have wandered
as far south as the equator. Soon other Arabian
families came over on account of oppression and
founded the towns of Magadosho and Brava, both
not far north of the equator. The first town be-
came a place of importance and other settlements
were made. The Emoxaidi, whom the later im-
migrants regarded as heretics, were driven in-
land and became the interpreting traders between
the coast and the Bantu. Some wanderers from
Magadosho came into the Port of Sofala and
86
THE NEGRO
there learned that gold could be obtained. This
led to a small Arab settlement at that place.
Seventy years later, and about fifty years before
the Norman conquest of England, certain Per-
sians settled at Kilwa in East Africa, led by Ali,
who had been despised in his land because he
was the son of a black Abyssinian slave mother.
Kilwa, because of this, eventually became the
most important commercial station on the East
African coast, and in this and all these settle-
ments a very large mulatto population grew up,
so that very soon the whole settlement was in-
distinguishable in color from the Bantu.
In 1330 Ibn Batuta visited Edlwa. He found
an abundance of ivory and some gold and heard
that the inhabitants of Kilwa had gained vic-
tories over the Zenji or Bantu. Kilwa had at
that time three hundred mosques and was
“ built of handsome houses of stone and lime, and
very lofty, with their windows like those of the
Christians; in the same way it has streets, and
these houses have got terraces, and the wood-
work is with the masonry, with plenty of gardens,
in which there are many fruit trees and much
water.” 1 Kilwa after a time captured Sofala,
seizing it from Magadosho. Eventually Kilwa
became mistress of the island of Zanzibar, of
Mozambique, and of much other territory.
The forty-third ruler of Kilwa after Ali was
named Abraham, and he was ruling when the
Portuguese arrived. The latter reported that
1 Barbosa. Quoted in Keane, II, 482.
GREAT LAKES AND ZYMBABWE 87
these people cultivated rice and cocoa, built
ships, and had considerable commerce with
Asia. All the people, of whatever color, were
Mohammedans, and the richer were clothed in
gorgeous robes of silk and velvet. They traded
with the inland Bantus and met numerous tribes,
receiving gold, ivory, millet, rice, cattle, poultry,
and honey.
On the islands the Asiatics were independent,
but on the main lands south of Kilwa the sheiks
ruled only their own people, under the over-
lordship of the Bantus, to whom they were com-
pelled to pay large tribute each year.
Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good
Hope in 1497 and went north on the east coast
as far as India. In the next ten years the Portu-
guese had occupied more than six different points
on that coast, including Sofala.1
Thus civilization waxed and waned in East
Africa among prehistoric Negroes, Arab and
Persian mulattoes on the coast, in the Zend or
Zeng empire of Bantu Negroes, and later in the
Bantu rule of the Monomotapa. And thus,
too, among later throngs of the fiercer, warlike
Bantu, the ancient culture of the land largely
died. Yet something survived, and in the modern
Bantu state, language, and industry can be found
1 It was called Sofala, from an Arabic word, and may be
associated with the Ophir of Solomon. So, too, the river
Sabi, a little off Sofala, may be associated with the name of
the Queen of Sheba, whose lineage was supposed to be per-
petuated in the powerful Monomotapa as well as the Abys-
sinians.
88
THE NEGRO
clear links that establish the essential identity
of the absorbed peoples with the builders of
Zymbabwe.
So far we have traced the history of the lands
into which the southward stream of invading
Bantus turned, and have followed them to the
Limpopo River. We turn now to the lands north
from Lake Nyassa.
The aboriginal Negroes sustained in prehis-
toric time invasions from the northeast by
Negroids of a type like the ancient Egyptians
and like the modern Gallas, Masai, and Somalis.
To these migrations were added attacks from
the Nile Negroes to the north and the Bantu
invaders from the south. This has led to great
differences among the groups of the population
and in their customs. Some are fierce moun-
taineers, occupying hilly plateaus six thousand
feet above the sea level; others, like the Wa
Swahili, are traders on the coast. There are the
Masai, chocolate-colored and frizzly-haired, or-
ganized for war and cattle lifting; and Negroids
like the Gallas, who, blending with the Bantus,
have produced the race of modern Uganda.
It was in this region that the kingdom of Kit-
wara was founded by the Galla chief, Kintu.
About the beginning of the nineteenth century
the empire was dismembered, the largest share
falling to Uganda. The ensuing history of
Uganda is of great interest. When King Mutesa
came to the throne in 1862, he found Mohamme-
dan influences in his land and was induced to
GREAT LAKES AND ZYMBABWE 89
admit English Protestants and French Catho-
lics. Uganda thereupon became an extraordinary
religious battlefield between these three beliefs.
Mutesa’s successor, Mwanga, caused an Eng-
lish bishop to be killed in 1885, believing (as
has since proven quite true) that the religion he
offered would be used as a cloak for conquest.
The final result was that, after open war between
the religions, Uganda was made an English pro-
tectorate in 1894.
The Negroes of Uganda are an intelligent people
who had organized a complex feudal state. At
the head stood the king, and under him twelve
feudal lords. The present king, Daudi Chua,
is the young grandson of Mutesa and rules under
the overlordship of England.
Many things show the connection between
Egypt and this part of Africa. The same glass
beads are found in Uganda and Upper Egypt,
and similar canoes are built. Harps and other
instruments bear great resemblance. Finally
the Bahima, as the Galla invaders are called, are
startlingly Egyptian in type; at the same time
they are undoubtedly Negro in hair and color.
Perhaps we have here the best racial picture of
what ancient Egyptian and upper Nile regions
were in predynastic times and later.
Thus in outline was seen the mission of The
People — La Bantu as they called themselves.
They migrated, they settled, they tore down, and
they learned, and they in turn were often over-
thrown by succeeding tribes of their own folk.
90
THE NEGRO
They rule with their tongue and their power all
Africa south of the equator, save where the
Europeans have entered. They have never been
conquered, although the gold and diamond traders
have sought to debauch them, and the ivory and
rubber capitalists have cruelly wronged their
weaker groups. They are the Africans with whom
the world of to-morrow must reckon, just as the
world of yesterday knew them to its cost.
CHAPTER VII
THE WAR OF RACES AT LAND’S END
Primitive man in Africa is found in the in-
terior jungles and down at Land’s End in South
Africa. The Pygmy people in the jungles repre-
sent to-day a small survival from the past, but
a survival of curious interest, pushed aside by
the torrent of conquest. Also pushed on by these
waves of Bantu conquest, moved the ancient
Abatwa or Bushmen. They are small in stature,
yellow in color, with crisp-curled hair. The
traditions of the Bushmen say that they came
southward from the regions of the Great Lakes,
and indeed the king and queen of Punt, as de-
picted by the Egyptians, were Bushmen or Hot-
tentots.
Their tribes may be divided, in accordance
with their noticeable artistic talents, into the
painters and the sculptors. The sculptors en-
tered South Africa by moving southward through
the more central portions of the country, crossing
the Zambesi, and coming down to the Cape.
The painters, on the other hand, came through
Damaraland on the west coast; when they came
to the great mountain regions, they turned east-
ward and can be traced as far as the mountains
91
92
THE NEGRO
opposite Delagoa Bay. The mass of them set-
tled down in the lower part of the Cape and in the
Kalahari desert. The painters were true cave
dwellers, but the sculptors lived in large com-
munities on the stony hills, which they marked
with their carvings.
These Bushmen believed in an ancient race of
people who preceded them in South Africa.
They attributed magic power to these unknown
folk, and said that some of them had been
translated as stars to the sky. Before their
groups were dispersed the Bushmen had regular
government. Tribes with their chiefs occupied
well-defined tracts of country and were sub-
divided into branch tribes under subsidiary
chiefs. The great cave represented the dignity
and glory of the entire tribe.
The Bushmen suffered most cruelly in the suc-
ceeding migrations and conquests of South
Africa. They fought desperately in self-defense;
they saw their women and children carried into
bondage and they themselves hunted like wild
beasts. Both savage and civilized men appro-
priated their land. Still they were brave people.
“In this struggle for existence their bitterest
enemies, of whatever shade of color they might
be, were forced to make an unqualified acknowl-
edgment of the courage and daring they so in-
variably exhibited.” 1
Here, to a remote corner of the world, where,
as one of their number said, they had supposed
1 Stowe: Native Races of South Africa, pp. 215-216.
WAR OF RACES AT LAND’S END 93
that the only beings in the world were Bushmen
and lions, came a series of invaders. It was the
outer ripples of civilization starting far away,
the indigenous and external civilizations of
Africa beating with great impulse among the
Ethiopians and the Egyptian mulattoes and
Sudanese Negroes and Yorubans, and driving
the Bantu race southward. The Bantus crowded
more and more upon the primitive Bushmen, and
probably a mingling of the Bushmen and the
Bantus gave rise to the Hottentots.
The Hottentots, or as they called themselves,
Khoi Khoin (Men of Men), were physically a
stronger race than the Abatwa and gave many
evidences of degeneration from a high culture,
especially in the “phenomenal perfection” of a
language which “is so highly developed, both in
its rich phonetic system, as represented by a
very delicately graduated series of vowels and
diphthongs, and in its varied grammatical struc-
ture, that Lepsius sought for its affinities in the
Egyptian at the other end of the continent.”
When South Africa was first discovered there
were two distinct types of Hottentot. The more
savage Hottentots were simply large, strong
Bushmen, using weapons superior to the Bush-
men, without domestic cattle or sheep. Other
tribes nearer the center of South Africa were
handsomer in appearance and raised an Egyptian
breed of cattle which they rode.
In general the Hottentots were yellow, with
close-curled hair, high cheek bones, and some-
94
THE NEGRO
what oblique eyes. Their migration commenced
about the end of the fourteenth century and was,
as is usual in such cases, a scattered, straggling
movement. The traditions of the Hottentots
point to the lake country of Central Africa as
their place of origin, whence they were driven by
the Bechuana tribes of the Bantu. They fled
westward to the ocean and then turned south and
came upon the Bushmen, whom they had only
partially subdued when the Dutch arrived as
settlers in 1652.
The Dutch “Boers” began by purchasing land
from the Hottentots and then, as they grew more
powerful, they dispossessed the dark men and
tried to enslave them. There grew up a large
Dutch-Hottentot class. Indeed the filtration of
Negro blood noticeable in modern Boers accounts
for much curious history. Soon after the advent
of the Dutch some of the Hottentots, of whom
there were not more than thirty or forty thousand,
led by the Korana clans, began slowly to retreat
northward, followed by the invading Dutch
and fighting the Dutch, each other, and the
wretched Bushmen. In the latter part of the
eighteenth century the Hottentots had reached
the great interior plain and met the on-coming
outposts of the Bantu nations.
The Bechuana, whom the Hottentots first
met, were the most advanced of the Negro tribes
of Central Africa. They had crossed the Zambesi
in the fourteenth or fifteenth century; their
government was a sort of feudal system with
WAR OF RACES AT LAND’S END 95
hereditary chiefs and vassals; they were careful
agriculturists, laid out large towns with great
regularity, and were the most skilled of smiths.
They used stone in building, carved on wood, and
many of them, too, were keen traders. These
tribes, coming southward, occupied the east-
central part of South Africa comprising modern
Bechuanaland. Apparently they had started
from the central lake country somewhere late
in the fifteenth century, and by the middle of
the eighteenth century one of their great chiefs,
Tao, met the on-coming Hottentots.
The Hottentots compelled Tao to retreat, but
the mulatto Gricquas arrived from the south,
and, allying themselves with the Bechuana,
stopped the rout. The Gricquas sprang from
and took their name from an old Hottentot
tribe. They were led by Kok and Barends, and
by adding other elements they became, partly
through their own efforts and partly through the
efforts of the missionaries, a community of fairly
well civilized people. In Gricqualand WTest the
mulatto Gricquas, under their chiefs Kok and
Waterboer, lived until the discovery of diamonds.
The Gricquas and Bechuana tribes were thus
gradually checking the Hottentots when, in the
nineteenth century, there came two new develop-
ments: first, the English took possession of Cape
Colony, and the Dutch began to move in larger
numbers toward the interior; secondly, a
newer and fiercer element of the Bantu tribes,
the Zulu-Kaffirs, appeared. The Kaffirs, or as
96
THE NEGRO
they called themselves, the Amazosas, claimed
descent from Zuide, a great chief of the fifteenth
century in the lake country. They are among
the tallest people in the world, averaging five
feet ten inches, and are slim, well-proportioned,
and muscular. The more warlike tribes were
usually clothed in leopard or ox skins. Cattle
formed their chief wealth, stock breeding and
hunting and fighting their main pursuits.
Mentally they were men of tact and intelligence,
with a national religion based upon ancestor
worship, while their government was a patriarchal
monarchy limited by an aristocracy and almost
feudal in character. The common law which
had grown up from the decisions of the chiefs
made the head of the family responsible for the
conduct of its branches, a village for all its resi-
dents, and the clan for all its villages. Finally
there was a paramount chief, who was the civil
and military father of his people. These people
laid waste to the coast regions and in 1779 came
in contact with the Dutch. A series of Dutch-
Kaffir wars ensued between 1779 and 1795 in
which the Dutch were hard pressed.
In 1806 the English took final possession of
Cape Colony. At that time there were twenty-
five thousand Boers, twenty-five thousand pure
and mixed Hottentots, and twenty-five thousand
slaves secured from the east coast. Between
1811 and 1877 there were six Kaffir-English wars.
One of these in 1818 grew out of the ignorant
interference of the English with the Kaffir tribal
WAR OF RACES AT LAND’S END 97
system; then there came a terrible war between
1834 and 1835, followed by the annexation of
all the country as far as the Kei River. The war
of the Axe (1846—48) led to further annexation
by the British.
Hostilities broke out again in 1856 and 1863.
In the former year, despairing of resistance to
invading England, a prophet arose who advised
the wholesale destruction of all Kaffir property
except weapons, in order that this faith might
bring back their dead heroes. The result was
that almost a third of the nation perished from
hunger. Fresh troubles occurred in 1877, when
the Ama-Xosa confederacy was finally broken
up, and to-day gradually these tribes are passing
from independence to a state of mild vassalage
to the British.
Meantime the more formidable part of the
Zulu-Kaffirs had been united under the terrible
Chief Chaka. He had organized a military
system, not a new one by any means, but one of
which we hear rumors back in the lake regions in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Mc-
Donald says, “There has probably never been a
more perfect system of discipline than that by
which Chaka ruled his army and kingdom. At
a review an order might be given in the most
unexpected manner, which meant death to hun-
dreds. If the regiment hesitated or dared to
remonstrate, so perfect was the discipline and
so great the jealousy that another was ready to
cut them down. A warrior returning from battle
98
THE NEGRO
without his arms was put to death without trial.
A general returning unsuccessful in the main
purpose of his expedition shared the same fate.
Whoever displeased the king was immediately
executed. The traditional courts practically
ceased to exist so far as the will and action of the
tyrant was concerned.” With this army Chaka
fell on tribe after tribe. The Bechuana fled
before him and some tribes of them were en-
tirely destroyed. The Hottentots suffered se-
verely and one of his rival Zulu tribes under
Umsilikatsi fled into Matabililand, pushing back
theJBechuana. By the time the English came to
Port Natal, Chaka was ruling over the whole
southeastern seaboard, from the Limpopo River
to Cape Colony, including the Orange and Trans-
vaal states and the whole of Natal. Chaka was
killed in 1828 and was eventually succeeded by
his brother Dingan, who reigned twelve years.
It was during Dingan’s reign that England tried
to abolish slavery in Cape Colony, but did not
pay promptly for the slaves, as she had promised;
the result was the so-called “Great Trek,” about
1834, when thousands of Boers went into the
interior across the Orange and Vaal rivers.
Dingan and these Boers were soon engaged in
a death struggle in which the Zulus were repulsed
and Dingan replaced by Panda. Under this chief
there was something like repose for sixteen years,
but in 1856 civil war broke out between his sons,
one of whom, Cetewayo, succeeded his father
in 1882. He fell into border disputes with the
WAR OF RACES AT LAND’S END 99
English, and the result was one of the fiercest
clashes of Europe and Africa in modern days.
The Zulus fought desperately, annihilating at
one time a whole detachment and killing the
young prince Napoleon. But after all it was
assagais against machine guns, and the Zulus
were finally defeated at Ulundi, July 4, 1879.
Thereupon Zululand was divided among thirteen
semi-independent chiefs and became a British
protectorate.
Since then the best lands have been gradually
reoccupied by a large number of tribes — Kaffirs
from the south and Zulus from the north. The
tribal organization, without being actually broken
up, has been deprived of its dangerous features
by appointing paid village headmen and trans-
forming the hereditary chief into a British govern-
ment official. In Natal there are about one hun-
dred and seventy tribal chiefs, and nearly half
of these have been appointed by the governor.
Umsilikatsi, who had been driven into Mata-
bililand by the terrible Chaka in 1828 and de-
feated by the Dutch in 1837, had finally reestab-
lished his headquarters in Rhodesia in 1838.
Here he introduced the Zulu military system and
terrorized the peaceful and industrious Bechuana
populations. Lobengula succeeded Umsilikatsi
in 1870 and, realizing that his power was waning,
began to retreat northward toward the Zambesi.
He was finally defeated by the British and native
forces in 1893 and the land was incorporated into
South Central Africa.
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THE NEGRO
The result of all these movements was to
break the inhabitants of Bechuanaland into
numerous fragments. There were small numbers
of mulatto Gricquas in the southwest and similar
Bastaards in the northwest. The Hottentots
and Bushmen were dispersed into groups and
seem doomed to extinction, the last Hottentot
chief being deposed in 1810 and replaced by an
English magistrate. Partially civilized Hotten-
tots still live grouped together in their kraals
and are members of Christian churches. The
Bechuana hold their own in several centers;
one is in Basutoland, west of Natal, where a
number of tribes were welded together under
the far-sighted Moshesh into a modern and fairly
well civilized nation. In the north part of
Bechuanaland are the self-governing Bamang-
wato and the Batwana, the former ruled by
Khama, one of the canniest of modern rulers in
Africa.
Meantime, in Portuguese territory south of the
Zambesi, there arose Gaza, a contemporary and
rival of Chaka. His son, Manikus, was deputed
by Dingan, Chaka’s successor, to drive out the
Portuguese. This Manikus failed to do, and
to escape vengeance he migrated north of the
Limpopo. Here he established his military
kraal in a district thirty-six hundred and fifty
feet above the sea and one hundred and twenty
miles inland from Sofala. From this place his
soldiery nearly succeeded in driving the Portu-
guese out of East Africa. He was succeeded by
WAR OF RACES AT LAND S END 101
his son, Umzila, and Umzila’s brother, Guzana
(better known as Gungunyana), who exercised
for a time joint authority. Gungunyana was
finally overthrown in November, 1895, captured,
and removed to the Azores.
North of the Zambesi, in British territory, the
chief role in recent times has been played by
the Bechuana, the first of the Bantu to return
northward after the South African migration.
Livingstone found there the Makolo, who with
other tribes had moved northward on account
of the pressure of the Dutch and Zulus below,
and by conquering various tribes in the Zambesi
region had established a strong power. This
kingdom was nearly overthrown by the rebellion
of the Barotse, and in 1875 the Barotse kingdom
comprised a large territory. To-day their king,
Newaneika, rules directly and indirectly fifty
thousand square miles, with a population between
one and two and a half million. They are under
a protectorate of the British.
In Southwest Africa, Hottentot mulattoes
crossing from the Cape caused widespread change.
They were strong men and daring fighters and
soon became dominant in what is now German
Southwest Africa, where they fought fiercely
with the Bantu Ova-Hereros. Armed with fire
arms, these Namakwa Hottentots threatened
Portuguese West Africa, but Germany intervened,
ostensibly to protect missionaries. By spending
millions of dollars and thousands of soldiers Ger-
many has nearly exterminated these brave men.
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THE NEGRO
Thus we have between the years 1400 and 1900
a great period of migration up to 1750, when
Bushmen, Hottentot, Bantu, and Dutch ap-
peared in succession at Land’s End. In the latter
part of the eighteenth century we have the clash
of the Hottentots and Bechuana, followed in the
nineteenth century by the terrible wars of Chaka,
the Kaffirs, and Matabili. Finally, in the latter
half of the nineteenth century, we see the gradual
subjection of the Kaffir-Zulus and the Bechuana
under the English and the final conquest of the
Dutch. The resulting racial problem in South
Africa is one of great intricacy.
To the racial problem has been added the
tremendous problems of modern capital brought
by the discovery of gold and diamond mines, so
that the future of the Negro race is peculiarly
bound up in developments here at Land’s End,
where the ship of the Flying Dutchman beats
back and forth on its endless quest.
Ancient Kingdoms of Africa
Races in Africa
CHAPTER VIII
AFRICAN CULTURE
We have followed the history of mankind in
Africa down the valley of the Nile, past Ethiopia,
to Egypt; we have seen kingdoms arise along
the great bend of the Niger and strive with the
ancient culture at its mouth. We have seen the
remnants of mankind at Land’s End, the ancient,
culture at Punt and Zymbabwe, and followed,
the invading Bantu east, south, and west to
their greatest center in the vast jungle of the
Congo valleys.
We must now gather these threads together'
and ask what manner of men these were and how
far and in what way they progressed on the road
of human culture.
That Negro peoples were the beginners of
civilization along the Ganges, the Euphrates,
and the Nile seems proven. Early Babylon was
founded by a Negroid race. Hammurabi’s
code, the most ancient known, says “Anna and
Bel called me, Hammurabi the exalted prince,
the worshiper of the gods; to cause justice to pre-
vail in the land, to destroy the wicked, to prevent
the strong from oppressing the weak, to go forth
like the sun over the black-head race, to enlighten
103
104
THE NEGRO
the land, and to further the welfare of the
people.” The Assyrians show a distinct Negroid
strain and early Egypt was predominantly Negro.
These earliest of cultures were crude and primi-
tive, but they represented the highest attain-
ment of mankind after tens of thousands of years
in unawakened savagery.
It has often been assumed that the Negro is
physically inferior to other races and markedly
distinguishable from them; modern science gives
no authority for such an assumption. The sup-
posed inferiority cannot rest on color,1 for that
is “due to the combined influences of a great
number of factors of environment working
through physiological processes,” and “however
marked the contrasts may be, there is no cor-
responding difference in anatomical structure
discoverable.” 2 So, too, difference in texture
of hair is a matter of degree, not kind, and is
caused by heat, moisture, exposure, and the like.
The bony skeleton presents no distinctly
racial lines of variation. Prognathism “ presents
too many individual varieties to be taken as a
distinctive character of race.”3 Difference in
physical measurements does not show the Negro
to be a more primitive evolutionary form.
Comparative ethnology to-day affords “no sup-
port to the view which sees in the so-called lower
1 “ Some authors write that the Ethiopians paint the devil
white, in disdain of our complexions.” — Ludolf: History
of Ethiopia, p. 72.
J Ripley: Races of Europe, pp. 58, 62.
1 Denniker: Races of Men, p. 63.
AFRICAN CULTURE
105
races of mankind a transition stage from beast
to man.” 1
Much has been made of the supposed smaller
brain of the Negro race; but this is as yet an
unproved assumption, based on the uncritical
measurement of less than a thousand Negro
brains as compared with eleven thousand or
more European brains. Even if future measure-
ment prove the average Negro brain lighter, the
vast majority of Negro brain weights fall within
the same limits as the whites; and finally,
“neither size nor weight of the brain seems to
be of importance” as an index of mental capacity.
We may, therefore, say with Ratzel, “There is
only one species of man. The variations are
numerous, but do not go deep.” 2
To this we may add the word of the Secretary
of the First Races Congress: “We are, then,
under the necessity of concluding that an im-
partial investigator would be inclined to look
upon the various important peoples of the world
as to all intents and purposes essentially equal
in intellect, enterprise, morality, and physique.” 3
If these conclusions are true, we should expect
to see in iMrica the human drama play itself out
much as in other lands, and such has actually been
the fact. At the same time we must expect
peculiarities arising from the physiography of
1 G. Finot: Race Prejudice. F. Herz: Modeme Rassen-
theorien.
2 Ratzel: quoted in Spiller: Inter-Racial Problems, p. 31.
* Spiller: Inter-Racial Problems, p. 35,
106
THE NEGRO
the land — its climate, its rainfall, its deserts,
and the peculiar inaccessibility of the coast.
Three principal zones of habitation appear:
first, the steppes and deserts around the Sahara
in the north and the Kalahari desert in the
south; secondly, the grassy highlands bordering
the Great Lakes and connecting these two regions;
thirdly, the forests and rivers of Central and
West Africa. In the deserts are the nomads,
and the Pygmies are in the forest fastnesses.
Herdsmen and their cattle cover the steppes and
highlands, save where the tsetse fly prevents. In
the open forests and grassy highlands are the
agriculturists.
Among the forest farmers the village is the
center of life, while in the open steppes political
life tends to spread into larger political units.
Political integration is, however, hindered by an
ease of internal communication almost as great
as the difficulty of reaching outer worlds beyond
the continent. The narrow Nile valley alone
presented physical barriers formidable enough
to keep back the invading barbarians of the
south, and even then with difficulty. Elsewhere
communication was all too easy. For a while the
Congo forests fended away the restless, but this
only temporarily.
On the whole Africa from the Sahara to the
Cape offered no great physical barrier to the
invader, and we continually have whirlwinds
of invading hosts rushing now southward, now
northward, from the interior to the coast and
AFRICAN CULTURE
107
from the coast inland, and hurling their force
against states, kingdoms, and cities. Some re-
sisted for generations, some for centuries, some
but a few years. It is, then, this sudden change
and the fear of it that marks African culture,
particularly in its political aspects, and which
makes it so difficult to trace this changing past.
Nevertheless beneath all change rests the strong
substructure of custom, religion, industry, and
art well worth the attention of students.
Starting with agriculture, we learn that
“among all the great groups of the ‘natural’
races, the Negroes are the best and keenest
tillers of the ground. A minority despise
agriculture and breed cattle; many combine
both occupations. Among the genuine tillers
the whole life of the family is taken up in agri-
culture, and hence the months are by preference
called after the operations which they demand.
Constant clearings change forests to fields, and
the ground is manured with the ashes of the burnt
thicket. In the middle of the fields rise the light
watch-towers, from which a watchman scares
grain-eating birds and other thieves. An African
cultivated landscape is incomplete without barns.
The rapidity with which, when newly imported,
the most various forms of cultivation spread in
Africa says much for the attention which is
devoted to this branch of economy. Industries,
again, which may be called agricultural, like the
preparation of meal from millet and other crops,
also from cassava, the fabrication of fermented
108
THE NEGRO
drinks from grain, or the manufacture of cotton,
are widely known and sedulously fostered.” 1
Bucher reminds us of the deep impression made
upon travelers when they sight suddenly the
well-attended fields of the natives on emerging
from the primeval forests. “In the more thickly
populated parts of Africa these fields often stretch
for many a mile, and the assiduous care of the
Negro women shines in all the brighter light when
we consider the insecurity of life, the constant
feuds and pillages, in which no one knows whether
he will in the end be able to harvest what he has
sown. Livingstone gives somewhere a graphic
description of the devastations wrought by slave
hunts; the people were lying about slain, the
dwellings were demolished; in the fields, however,
the grain was ripening and there was none to
harvest it.” 2
Sheep, goat, and chickens are domestic animals
all over Africa, and Von Franzius considers Africa
the home of the house cattle and the Negro as the
original tamer. Northeastern Africa especially
is noted for agriculture, cattle raising, and fruit
culture. In the eastern Sudan, and among the
great Bantu tribes extending from the Sudan
down toward the south, cattle are evidences of
wealth; one tribe, for instance, having so many
oxen that each village had ten or twelve thou-
sand head. Lenz (1884), Bouet-Williaumez
(1848), Hecquard (1854), Bosman (1805), and
1 Ratzel : History of Mankind, II, 380 ff .
1 Industrial Evolution, p. 47.
AFRICAN CULTURE
109
Baker (1868) all bear witness to this, and
Schweinfurth (1878) tells us of great cattle parks
with two to three thousand head and of numerous
agricultural and cattle-raising tribes. Von der
Decken (1859-61) described the paradise of the
dwellers about Kilimanjaro — the bananas, fruit,
beans and peas, cattle raising with stall feed, the
fertilizing of the fields, and irrigation. The
Negroid Gallas have seven or eight cattle to
each inhabitant. Livingstone bears witness to
the busy cattle raising of the Bantus and Kaffirs.
Hulub (1881) and Chapman (1868) tell of agri-
culture and fruit raising in South Africa. Shutt
(1884) found the tribes in the southwestern
basin of the Congo with sheep, swine, goats,
and cattle. On this agricultural and cattle-
raising economic foundation has arisen the or-
ganized industry of the artisan, the trader, and
the manufacturer.
While the Pygmies, still living in the age of
wood, make no iron or stone implements, they
seem to know how to make bark cloth and fiber
baskets and simple outfits for hunting and fishing.
Among the Bushmen the art of making weapons
and working in hides is quite common. The
Hottentots are further advanced in the indus-
trial arts, being well versed in the manufacture
of clothing, weapons, and utensils. In the dress-
ing of skins and furs, as well as in the plaiting of
cords and the weaving of mats, we find evidences
of their workmanship. In addition they are good
workers in iron and copper, using the sheepskin
110
THE NEGRO
bellows for this purpose. The Ashantis of the
Gold Coast know how to make “cotton fabrics,
turn and glaze earthenware, forge iron, fabricate
instruments and arms, embroider rugs and car-
pets, and set gold and precious stones. ” 1
Among the people of the banana zone we find
rough basket work, coarse pottery, grass cloth,
and spoons made of wood and ivory. The people
of the millet zone, because of uncertain agri-
cultural resources, quite generally turn to manu-
facturing. Charcoal is prepared by the smiths,
iron is smelted, and numerous implements are
manufactured. Among them we find axes,
hatchets, hoes, knives, nails, scythes, and other
hardware. Cloaks, shoes, sandals, shields, and
water and oil vessels are made from leather
which the natives have dressed. Soap is manu-
factured in the Bautschi district, glass is made,
formed, and colored by the people of Nupeland,
and in almost every city cotton is spun and woven
and dyed. Barth tells us that the weaving of
cotton was known in the Sudan as early as the
eleventh century. There is also extensive manu-
facture of wooden ware, tools, implements, and
utensils.
In describing particular tribes, Baker and
Felkin tell of smiths of wonderful adroitness,
goatskins prepared better than a European tanner
could do, drinking cups and kegs of remarkable
symmetry, and polished clay floors. Schwein-
1 These and other references in this chapter are from
Schneider: Cultur-fahigkrit des Negert.
AFRICAN CULTURE
111
furth says, “The arrow and the spear heads are
of the finest and most artistic work; their bristle-
like barbs and points are baffling when one
knows how few tools these smiths have.” Ex-
cellent wood carving is found among the Bongo,
Ovambo, and Makololo. Pottery and basketry
and careful hut building distinguish many tribes.
Cameron (1877) tells of villages so clean, with
huts so artistic, that, save in book knowledge,
the people occupied no low plane of civilization.
The Mangbettu work both iron and copper.
“The masterpieces of the Monbutto [Mang-
bettu] smiths are the fine chains worn as orna-
ments, and which in perfection of form and fine-
ness compare well with our best steel chains.”
Shubotz in 1911 called the Mangbettu “a highly
cultivated people” in architecture and handi-
craft. Barth found copper exported from Cen-
tral Africa in competition with European copper
at Kano.
Nor is the iron industry confined to the Sudan.
About the Great Lakes and other parts of Cen-
tral Africa it is widely distributed. Thornton
says, “This iron industry proves that the East
Africans stand by no means on so low a plane of
culture as many travelers would have us think.
It is unnecessary to be reminded what a people
without instruction, and with the rudest tools to
do such skilled work, could do if furnished with
steel tools.” Arrows made east of Lake Nyanza
were found to be nearly as good as the best Swed-
ish iron in Birmingham. From Egypt to the
112
THE NEGRO
Cape, Livingstone assures us that the mortar
and pestle, the long-handled axe, the goatskin
bellows, etc., have the same form, size, etc.,
pointing to a migration south westward. Holub
(1879), on the Zambesi, found fine workers in
iron and bronze. The Bantu huts contain
spoons, wooden dishes, milk pails, calabashes,
handmills, and axes.
Kaffirs and Zulus, in the extreme south, are
good smiths, and the latter melt copper and
tin together and draw wire from it, according
to Kranz (1880). West of the Great Lakes,
Stanley (1878) found wonderful examples of
smith work: figures worked out of brass and
much work in copper. Cameron (1878) saw vases
made near Lake Tanganyika which reminded
him of the amphorse in the Villa of Diomedes,
Pompeii. Horn (1882) praises tribes here for
iron and copper work. Livingstone (1871) passed
thirty smelting houses in one journey, and Cam-
eron came across bellows with valves, and tribes
who used knives in eating. He found tribes which
no Europeans had ever visited, who made ingots
of copper in the form of the St. Andrew’s cross,
which circulated even to the coast. In the
southern Congo basin iron and copper are worked;
also wood and ivory carving and pottery making
are pursued. In equatorial West Africa, Lenz
and Du Chaillu (1861) found iron workers with
charcoal, and also carvers of bone and ivory.
Near Cape Lopez, Htibbe-Schleiden found tribes
making ivory needles inlaid with ebony, while
AFRICAN CULTURE
113
the arms and dishes of the Osaka are found
among many tribes even as far as the Atlantic
Ocean. Wilson (1856) found natives in West
Africa who could repair American watches.
Gold Coast Negroes make gold rings and chains,
forming the metal into all kinds of forms.
Soyaux says, “The works in relief which natives
of Lower Guinea carve with their own knives out
of ivory and hippopotamus teeth are really en-
titled to be called works of art, and many wooden
figures of fetishes in the Ethnographical Museum
of Berlin show some understanding of the pro-
portions of the human body.” Great Bassam
is called by Hecquard the “Fatherland of
Smiths.” The Mandingo in the northwest are
remarkable workers in iron, silver, and gold, we
are told by Mungo Park (1800), while there is
a mass of testimony as to the work in the north-
west of Africa in gold, tin, weaving, and dyeing.
Caille found the Negroes in Bambana manu-
facturing gunpowder (1824-28), and the Hausa
make soap; so, too, Negroes in Uganda and
other parts have made guns after seeing Euro-
pean models.
So marked has been the work of Negro artisans
and traders in the manufacture and exchange of
iron implements that a growing number of ar-
cheologists are disposed to-day to consider the
Negro as the originator of the art of smelting iron.
Gabriel de Mortillet (1883) declared Negroes
the only iron users among primitive people.
Some would, therefore, argue that the Negro
114
THE NEGRO
learned it from other folk, but Andree declares
that the Negro developed his own “Iron King-
dom.” Schweinfurth, Von Luschan, Boaz, and
others incline to the belief that the Negroes in-
vented the smelting of iron and passed it on to
the Egyptians and to modern Europe.
Boaz says, “ It seems likely that at a time when
the European was still satisfied with rude stone
tools, the African had invented or adopted the
art of smelting iron. Consider for a moment
what this invention has meant for the advance
of the human race. As long as the hammer,
knife, saw, drill, the spade, and the hoe had to
be chipped out of stone, or had to be made of
shell or hard wood, effective industrial work was
not impossible, but difficult. A great progress
was made when copper found in large nuggets
was hammered out into tools and later on shaped
by melting, and when bronze was introduced;
but the true advancement of industrial life did
not begin until the hard iron was discovered.
It seems not unlikely that the people who made
the marvelous discovery of reducing iron ores by
smelting were the African Negroes. Neither
ancient Europe, nor ancient western Asia, nor
ancient China knew the iron, and everything
points to its introduction from Africa. At the
time of the great African discoveries toward the
end of the past century, the trade of the black-
smith was found all over Africa, from north to
south and from east to west. With his simple
bellows and a charcoal fire he reduced the ore
AFRICAN CULTURE
115
that is found in many parts of the continent and
forged implements of great usefulness and
beauty.” 1
Torday has argued recently, “I feel convinced
by certain arguments that seem to prove to my
satisfaction that we are indebted to the Negro
for the very keystone of our modern civilization
and that we owe him the discovery of iron.
That iron could be discovered by accident in
Africa seems beyond doubt: if this is so in other
parts of the world, I am not competent to say.
I will only remind you that Schweinfurth and
Petherick record the fact that in the northern
part of East Africa smelting furnaces are worked
without artificial air current and, on the other
hand, Stuhlmann and Kollmann found near
Victoria Nyanza that the natives simply mixed
powdered ore with charcoal and by introduction
of air currents obtained the metal. These sim-
ple processes make it simple that iron should
have been discovered in East or Central Africa.
No bronze implements have ever been found in
black Africa; had the Africans received iron
from the Egyptians, bronze would have preceded
this metal and all traces of it would not have
disappeared. Black Africa was for a long time
an exporter of iron, and even in the twelfth cen-
tury exports to India and Java are recorded by
Idrisi.
“It is difficult to imagine that Egypt should
have obtained it from Europe where the oldest
1 Atlanta University Leaflet, No. 19.
116
THE NEGRO
find (in Hallstadt) cannot be of an earlier period
than 800 B.c., or from Asia, where iron is not
known before 1000 b.c., and where, in the times
of Ashur Nazir Pal, it was still used concurrently
with bronze, while iron beads have been only
recently discovered by Messrs. G. A. Wainwright
and Bushe Fox in a predynastic grave, and where
a piece of this metal, possibly a tool, was found
in the masonry of the great pyramid.” 1
The Negro is a born trader. Lenz says, “our
sharpest European merchants, even Jews and
Armenians, can learn much of the cunning and
trade of the Negroes.” We know that the trade
between Central Africa and Egypt was in the
hands of Negroes for thousands of years, and in
early days the cities of the Sudan and North
Africa grew rich through Negro trade.
Leo Africanus, writing of Timbuktu in the
sixteenth century, said, “It is a wonder to see
what plentie of Merchandize is daily brought
hither and how costly and sumptuous all things
be. . . . Here are many shops of artificers and
merchants and especially of such as weave linnen
and cloth.”
Long before cotton weaving was a British
industry, West Africa and the Sudan were
supplying a large part of the world with cotton
cloth. Even to-day cities like Kuka on the west
shore of Lake Chad and Sokota are manufactur-
ing centers where cotton is spun and woven,
1 Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, XLIII,
414, 415. Cf. also The Crisis, Vol. IX, p. 234.
AFRICAN CULTURE
117
skins tanned, implements and iron ornaments
made.
“Travelers,” says Bucher, “have often ob-
served this tribal or local development of in-
dustrial technique. ‘The native villages,’ re-
lates a Belgian observer of the Lower Congo,
“‘are often situated in groups. Their activities
are based upon reciprocality, and they are to a
certain extent the complements of one another.
Each group has its more or less strongly defined
specialty. One carries on fishing; another pro-
duces palm wine; a third devotes itself to trade
and is broker for the others, supplying the com-
munity with all products from outside; another
has reserved to itself work in iron and copper,
making weapons for war and hunting, various
utensils, etc. None may, however, pass beyond
the sphere of its own specialty without exposing
itself to the risk of being universally proscribed.’ ”
From the Loango Coast, Bastian tells of a (
great number of centers for special products
of domestic industry. “ Loango excels in mats
and fishing baskets, while the carving of ele-
phants’ tusks is specially followed in Chilungo.
The so-called Mafooka hats with raised pat-
terns are drawn chiefly from the bordering coun-
try of Kakongo and Mayyume. In Bakunya
are made potter’s wares, which are in great de-
mand; in Basanza, excellent swords; in Basundi,
especially beautiful ornamented copper rings;
on the Congo, clever wood and tablet carvings;
in Loango, ornamented clothes and intricately
118
THE NEGRO
designed mats; in Mayumbe, clothing of finely
woven mat-work; in Kakongo, embroidered hats
and also burnt clay pitchers; and among the
Bayakas and Mantetjes, stuffs of woven grass.” 1
A native Negro student tells of the develop-
ment of trade among the Ashanti. “It was a
part of the state system of Ashanti to encour-
age trade. The king once in every forty days,
at the Adai custom, distributed among a number
of chiefs various sums of gold dust with a charge
to turn the same to good account. These chiefs
then sent down to the coast caravans of trades-
men, some of whom would be their slaves, some-
times some two or three hundred strong, to
barter ivory for European goods, or buy such
goods with gold dust, which the king obtained
from the royal alluvial workings. Down to 1873
a constant stream of Ashanti traders might be
seen daily wending their way to the merchants
of the coast and back again, yielding more cer-
tain wealth and prosperity to the merchants of
the Gold Coast and Great Britain than may be
expected for some time yet to come from the
mining industry and railway development put
together. The trade chiefs would, in due time,
render a faithful account to the king’s stewards,
being allowed to retain a fair portion of the
profit. In the king’s household, too, he would
have special men who directly traded for him.
Important chiefs carried on the same system
1 Bticher: Industrial Revolution (tr. by Wickett), pp.
57-58.
AFRICAN CULTURE
119
of trading with the coast as did the king. Thus
every member of the state, from the king down-
ward, took an active interest in the promotion
of trade and in the keeping open of trade routes
into the interior.” 1
The trade thus encouraged and carried on in
various parts of West Africa reached wide areas.
From the Fish River to Kuka, and from Lagos
to Zanzibar, the markets have become great
centers of trade, the leading implement to civiliza-
tion. Permanent markets are found in places
like Ujiji and Nyangwe, where everything can
be bought and sold from earthenware to wives;
from the one to three thousand traders flocked
here.
“How like is the market traffic, with all its
uproar and sound of human voices, to one of our
own markets ! There is the same rivalry in prais-
ing the goods, the violent, brisk movements, the
expressive gesture, the inquiring, searching glance,
the changing looks of depreciation or triumph,
of apprehension, delight, approbation. So says
Stanley. Trade customs are not everywhere alike.
If when negotiating with the Bangalas of Angola
you do not quickly give them what they want,
they go away and do not come back. Then
perhaps they try to get possession of the coveted
object by means of theft. It is otherwise with
the Songos and Kiokos, who let you deal with
them in the usual way. To buy even a small
article you must go to the market; people avoid
1 Hayford: Native Institutions, pp. 95-96.
120
THE NEGRO
trading anywhere else. If a man says to another;
‘Sell me this hen’ or ‘that fruit,’ the answer as
a rule will be, ‘Come to the market place.’ The
crowd gives confidence to individuals, and the
inviolability of the visitor to the market, and of
the market itself, looks like an idea of justice con-
secrated by long practice. Does not this remind
us of the old Germanic ‘market place’ ?” 1
Turning now to Negro family and social life
we find, as among all primitive peoples, polyg-
amy and marriage by actual or simulated pur-
chase. Out of the family develops the typical
African village organization, which is thus de-
scribed in Ashanti by a native Gold Coast writer :
“The headman, as his name implies, is the head
of a village community, a ward in a township, or
of a family. His position is important, inasmuch
as he has directly to deal with the composite
elements of the general bulk of the people.
“ It is the duty of the head of a family to bring
up the members thereof in the way they should
go; and by ‘family’ you must understand the
entire lineal descendants of a materfamilias, if
I may coin a convenient phrase. It is expected
of him by the state to bring up his charge in the
knowledge of matters political and traditional.
It is his work to train up his wards in the ways
of loyalty and obedience to the powers that be.
He is held responsible for the freaks of recalcitrant
members of his family, and he is looked to to
keep them within bounds and to insist upon
1 Ratzel, II. 376.
AFRICAN CULTURE
121
conformity of their party with the customs, laws,
and traditional observances of the community.
In early times he could send off to exile by sale
a troublesome relative who would not observe
the laws of the community.
“It is a difficult task that he is set to, but in
this matter he has all-powerful helpers in the
female members of the family, who will be either
the aunts, or the sisters, or the cousins, or the
nieces of the headman; and as their interests are
identical with his in every particular, the good
women spontaneously train up their children to
implicit obedience to the headman, whose rule
in the family thus becomes a simple and an easy
matter. ‘The hand that rocks the cradle rules
the world.’ What a power for good in the native
state system would the mothers of the Gold
Coast and Ashanti become by judicious training
upon native lines!
“The headman is par excellence the judge of
his family or ward. Not only is he called upon
to settle domestic squabbles, but frequently he
sits judge over more serious matters arising be-
tween one member of the ward and another;
and where he is a man of ability and influence,
men from other wards bring him their disputes
to settle. When he so settles disputes, he is
entitled to a hearing fee, which, however, is not
so much as would be payable in the regular court
of the king or chief.
“The headman is naturally an important
member of his company and often is a captain
122
THE NEGRO
thereof. When he combines the two offices of
headman and captain, he renders to the commu-
nity a very important service. For in times of
war, where the members of the ward would not
serve cordially under a stranger, they would in all
cases face any danger with their own kinsman
as their leader. The headman is always suc-
ceeded by his uterine brother, cousin, or nephew
— the line of succession, that is to say, following
the customary law.” 1
We may contrast this picture with the more
warlike Bantus of Southeast Africa. Each
tribe lived by itself in a town with from five to
fifteen thousand inhabitants, surrounded by
gardens of millet, beans, and watermelon.
Beyond these roamed their cattle, sheep, and
goats. Their religion was ancestor worship with
sacrifice to spirits and the dead, and some of the
tribes made mummies of the corpses and clothed
them for burial. They wove cloth of cotton and
bark, they carved wood and built walls of un-
hewn stone. They had a standing military or-
ganization, and the tribes had their various totems,
so that they were known as the Men of Iron, the
Men of the Sun, the Men of the Serpents, Sons
of the Corn Cleaners, and the like. Their sys-
tem of common law was well conceived and there
were organized tribunals of justice. In difficult
cases precedents were sought and learned anti-
quaries consulted. At the age of fifteen or sixteen
the boys were circumcised and formed into
1 Hay ford: Native lmtitutions, pp. 76 ff.
AFRICAN CULTURE
123
guilds. The land was owned by the tribe and
apportioned to the chief by each family, and the
main wealth of the tribe was in its cattle.
In general, among the African clans the idea
of private property was but imperfectly developed
and never included land. The main mass of
visible wealth belonged to the family and clan
rather than to the individual; only in the matter
of weapons and ornaments was exclusive private
ownership generally recognized.
The government, vested in fathers and chiefs,
varied in different tribes from absolute despotisms
to limited monarchies, almost republican. View-
ing the Basuto National Assembly in South
Africa, Lord Bryce recently wrote, “The resem-
blance to the primary assemblies of the early
peoples of Europe is close enough to add another
to the arguments which discredit the theory that
there is any such thing as an Aryan type of in-
stitutions.” 1
While women are sold into marriage through-
out Africa, nevertheless their status is far re-
moved from slavery. In the first place the tracing
of relationships through the female line, which is
all but universal in Africa, gives the mother great
influence. Parental affection is very strong, and
throughout Negro Africa the mother is the most
influential councilor, even in cases of tyrants
like Chaka or Mutesa.
“No mother can love more tenderly or be more
deeply beloved than the Negro mother. Robin
1 Impressions of South Africa, 3d ed., p. 352.
124
THE NEGRO
tells of a slave in Martinique who, with his
savings, freed his mother instead of himself.
‘Everywhere in Africa,’ writes Mungo Park,
‘I have noticed that no greater affront can be
offered a Negro than insulting his mother.
‘Strike me,’ cried a Mandingo to his enemy,
‘but revile not my mother!’ . . . The Herero
swears ‘By my mother’s tears!’ . . The Angola
Negroes have a saying, ‘As a mist lingers on the
swamps, so lingers the love of father and
another.’” 1
Black queens have often ruled African tribes.
Among the Ba-Lolo, we are told, women take
part in public assemblies where all-important
questions are discussed. The system of educat-
ing children among such tribes as the Yoruba is
worthy of emulation by many more civilized
peoples.
Close knit with the family and social organiza-
tion comes the religious life of the Negro. The
religion of Africa is the universal animism or
fetishism of primitive peoples, rising to polythe-
ism and approaching monotheism chiefly, but
not wholly, as a result of Christian and Islamic
missions. Of fetishism there is much misap-
prehension. It is not mere senseless degrada-
tion. It is a philosophy of life. Among primitive
Negroes there can be, as Miss Kingsley reminds
us, no such divorce of religion from practical life
as is common in civilized lands. Religion is life,
and fetish an expression of the practical recog-
1 William Schneider.
AFRICAN CULTURE
125
nition of dominant forces in which the Negro
lives. To him all the world is spirit. Miss
Kingsley says, “If you want, for example, to
understand the position of man in nature accord-
ing to fetish, there is, as far as I know, no clearer
statement of it made than is made by Goethe
in his superb ‘Prometheus.’”1 Fetish is a
severely logical way of accounting for the world
in terms of good and malignant spirits.
“It is this power of being able logically to
account for everything that is, I believe, at the
back of the tremendous permanency of fetish
in Africa, and the cause of many of the relapses
into it by Africans converted to other religions;
it is also the explanation of the fact that white
men who live in the districts where death and
danger are everyday affairs, under a grim pall
of boredom, are liable to believe in fetish, though
ashamed of so doing. For the African, whose
mind has been soaked in fetish during his early
and most impressionable years, the voice of
fetish is almost irresistible when affliction comes
to him.” 2
Ellis tells us of the spirit belief of the Ewe
people, who believe that men and all nature have
the indwelling “Kra,” which is immortal; that
the man himself after death may exist as a ghost,
which is often conceived of as departed from the
“Kra,” a shadowy continuing of the man.
Bryce, speaking of the Kaffirs of South Africa,
1 West African Studies, Chap. V.
1 Op. cit.
126
THE NEGRO
says, “To the Kaffirs, as to the most savage
races, the world was full of spirits — spirits of
the rivers, the mountains, and the woods. Most
important were the ghosts of the dead, who had
power to injure or help the living, and who
were, therefore, propitiated by offerings at
stated periods, as well as on occasions when
their aid was especially desired. This kind of
worship, the worship once most generally dif-
fused throughout the world, and which held its
ground among the Greeks and Italians in the
most flourishing period of ancient civilization,
as it does in China and Japan to-day, was, and
is, virtually the religion of the Kaffirs.” 1
African religion does not, however, stop with
fetish, but, as in the case of other peoples,
tends toward polytheism and monotheism.
Among the Yoruba, for instance, Frobenius
shows that religion and city-state go hand in
hand.
“The first experienced glance will here detect
the fact that this nation originally possessed a
clear and definite organization so duly ordered
and so logical that we but seldom meet with its
like among all the peoples of the earth. And the
basic idea of every clan’s progeniture is a powerful
God; the legitimate order in which the descend-
ants of a particular clan unite in marriage to
found new families, the essential origin of every
new-born babe’s descent in the founder of its
race and its consideration as a part of the God in
1 Imprearions of South Africa.
AFRICAN CULTURE
127
Chief; the security with which the newly wedded
wife not only may, but should, minister to her
own God in an unfamiliar home.” 1
The Yoruba have a legend of a dying divinity.
“This people . . . give evidence of a generalized
system; a theocratic scheme, a well-conceived
perceptible organization, reared in rhythmically
proportioned manner.”
Miss Kingsley says, “The African has a great
Over God.”2 Nassau, the missionary, declares,
“After more than forty years’ residence among
these tribes, fluently using their language, con-
versant with their customs, dwelling intimately
in their huts, associating with them in the various
relations of teacher, pastor, friend, master, fellow-
traveler, and guest, and in my special office as
missionary, searching after their religious thought
(and therefore being allowed a deeper entrance
into the arcana of their sold than would be ac-
corded to a passing explorer), I am able unhesi-
tatingly to say that among all the multitude of
degraded ones with whom I have met, I have seen
or heard of none whose religious thought was
only a superstition.
“Standing in the village street, surrounded by
a company whom their chief has courteously sum-
moned at my request, when I say to him, ‘I
have come to speak to your people,’ I do not need
to begin by telling them that there is a God.
Looking on that motley assemblage of villagers,
1 Frobenius: Voice of Africa, Vol. I.
J West African Studies, p. 107.
128
THE NEGRO
— the bold, gaunt cannibal with his armament of
gun, spear, and dagger; the artisan with rude
adze in hand, or hands soiled at the antique
bellows of the village smithy; women who have
hasted from their kitchen fire with hands white
with the manioc dough or still grasping the
partly scaled fish; and children checked in their
play with tiny bow and arrow or startled from
their dusty street pursuit of dog or goat, —
I have yet to be asked, ‘Who is God?’” 1
The basis of Egyptian religion was “of a
purely Nigritian character,” 2 and in its devel-
oped form Sudanese tribal gods were invoked
and venerated by the priests. In Upper Egypt,
near the confines of Ethiopia, paintings re-
peatedly represent black priests conferring on
red Egyptian priests the instruments and sym-
bols of priesthood. In the Sudan to-day Fro-
benius distinguishes four principal religions:
first, earthly ancestor worship; next, the social
cosmogony of the Atlantic races; third, the
religion of the Bori, and fourth, Islam. The
Bori religion spreads from Nubia as far as
the Hausa, and from Lake Chad in the Niger as
far as the Yoruba. It is the religion of possession
and has been connected by some with Asiatic
influences.
From without have come two great religious
influences, Islam and Christianity. Islam came
by conquest, trade, and proselytism. As a con-
1 Nassau: Fetishism in West Africa, p. 36.
* Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed., XX, 362.
AFRICAN CULTURE
129
queror it reached Egypt in the seventh century
and had by the end of the fourteenth century
firm footing in the Egyptian Sudan. It overran
the central Sudan by the close of the seventeenth
century, and at the beginning of the nineteenth
century had swept over Senegambia and the
whole valley of the Niger down to the Gulf of
Guinea. On the east Islam approached as a
trader in the eighth century; it spread into
Somaliland and overran Nubia in the fourteenth
century. To-day Islam dominates Africa north
of ten degrees north latitude and is strong
between five and ten degrees north latitude. In
the east it reaches below the Victoria Nyanza.
Christianity early entered Africa; indeed, as
Mommsen says, “It was through Africa that
Christianity became the religion of the world.
Tertullian and Cyprian were from Carthage,
Arnobius from Sicca Veneria, Lactantius, and
probably in like manner Minucius Felix, in spite
of their Latin names, were natives of Africa, and
not less so Augustine. In Africa the Church found
its most zealous confessors of the faith and its
most gifted defenders.” 1
The Africa referred to here, however, was not
Negroland, but Africa above the desert, where
Negro blood was represented in the ancient
Mediterranean race and by intercourse across the
desert. On the other hand Christianity was early
represented in the valley of the Nile under “the
most holy pope and patriarch of the great city
1 The African Provinces, II, 345.
130
THE NEGRO
of Alexandria and of all of the land of Egypt,
of Jerusalem, the holy city, of Nubia, Abyssinia,
and Pentapolis, and all the preaching of St.
Mark.” This patriarchate had a hundred bishop-
rics in the fourth century and included thousands
of black Christians. Through it the Cross pre-
ceded the Crescent in some of the remotest parts
of black Africa.
All these beginnings were gradually overthrown
by Islam except among the Copts in Egypt, and
in Abyssinia. The Portuguese in the sixteenth
century began to replant the Christian religion
and for a while had great success, both on the
east and west coasts. Roman Catholic enter-
prise halted in the eighteenth century and the
Protestants began. To-day the west coast is
studded with English and German missions,
South Africa is largely Christian through French
and English influence, and the region about the
Great Lakes is becoming christianized. The
Roman Catholics have lately increased their ac-
tivities, and above all the Negroes of America
have entered with their own churches and with
the curiously significant “Ethiopian” move-
ment.
Coming now to other spiritual aspects of
African culture, we can speak at present only in
a fragmentary way. Roughly speaking, Africa
can be divided into two language zones: north
of the fifth degree of north latitude is the zone
of diversity, with at least a hundred groups of
widely divergent languages; south of the line
AFRICAN CULTURE
131
there is one minor language (Bushman-Hotten-
tot), spoken by less than fifty thousand people,
and elsewhere the predominant Bantu tongue
with its various dialects, spoken by at least
fifty million. The Bantu tongue, which thus
rules all Central, West, and South Africa, is an
agglutinative tongue which makes especial use
of prefixes. The hundreds of Negro tongues or
dialects in the north represent most probably
the result of war and migration and the breaking
up of ancient centers of culture. In Abyssinia
and the great horn of East Africa the influence
of Semitic tongues is noted. Despite much effort
on the part of students, it has been impossible
to show any Asiatic origin for the Egyptian lan-
guage. As Sergi maintains, “everything favors
an African origin.” 1 The most brilliant sugges-
tion of modem days links together the Egyptian
of North Africa and the Hottentot and Bushmen
tongues of South Africa.
Language was reduced to writing among the
Egyptians and Ethiopians and to some extent
elsewhere in Africa. Over 100 manuscripts of
Ethiopian and Ethiopic-Arabian literature are
extant, including a version of the Bible and his-
torical chronicles. The Arabic was used as the
written tongue of the Sudan, and Negroland has
given us in this tongue many chronicles and
other works of black authors. The greatest of
these, the Epic of the Sudan (Tarikh-es-Soudan),
deserves to be placed among the classics of all
1 Mediterranean Race, p. 10.
132
THE NEGRO
literature. In other parts of Africa there was
no written language, but there was, on the other
hand, an unusual perfection of oral tradition
through bards, and extraordinary efficiency in
telegraphy by drum and horn.
The folklore and proverbs of the African tribes
are exceedingly rich. Some of these have been
made familiar to English writers through the
work of “Uncle Remus.” Others have been
collected by Johnston, Ellis, and Theal.
A black bard of our own day has described the
onslaught of the Matabili in poetry of singular
force and beauty:
They saw the clouds ascend from the plains:
It was the smoke of burning towns.
The confusion of the whirlwind
Was in the heart of the great chief of the blue-colored cattle.
The shout was raised,
“They are friends!”
But they shouted again,
“They are foes! ”
Till their near approach proclaimed them Matabili.
The men seized their arms,
And^rushed out as if to chase the antelope.
The onset was as the voice of lightning,
And their javelins as the shaking of the forest in the autumn
storm.1
There can be no doubt of the Negro’s deep
and delicate sense of beauty in form, color, and
sound. Soyaux says of African industry, “Who-
ever denies to them independent invention and
individual taste in their work either shuts his
eyes intentionally before perfectly evident facts,
1 Stowe: Native Races, etc., pp. 553-554.
AFRICAN CULTURE
133
or lack of knowledge renders him an incompetent
judge.” 1 M. Rutot had lately told us how the
Negro race brought art and sculpture to pre-
historic Europe. The bones of the European
Negroids are almost without exception found in
company with drawings and sculpture in high
and low relief; some of their sculptures, like
the Wellendorff “Venus,” are unusually well
finished for primitive man. So, too, the painting
and carving of the Bushmen and their fore-
runners in South Africa has drawn the admira-
tion of students. The Negro has been prolific in
the invention of musical instruments and has
given a new and original music to the western
world.
Schweinfurth, who has preserved for us much
of the industrial art of the Negroes, speaks of
their delight in the production of works of art
for the embellishment and convenience of life.
Frobenius expressed his astonishment at the
originality of the African in the Yoruba temple
which he visited. “ The lofty veranda was divided
from the passageway by fantastically carved and
colored pillars. On the pillars were sculptured
knights, men climbing trees, women, gods, and
mythical beings. The dark chamber lying beyond
showed a splendid red room with stone hatchets,
wooden figures, cowry beads, and jars. The whole
picture, the columns carved in colors in front of
the colored altar, the old man sitting in the circle
of those who reverenced him, the open scaffold-
1 Quoted in Schneider.
134
THE NEGRO
ing of ninety rafters, made a magnificent im-
pression.” 1
The Germans have found, in Kamarun,
towns built, castellated, and fortified in a manner
that reminds one of the prehistoric cities of
Crete. The buildings and fortifications of Zym-
babwe have already been described and some-
thing has been said of the art of Benin, with its
brass and bronze and ivory. All the work of
Benin in bronze and brass was executed by cast-
ing, and by methods so complicated that it would
be no easy task for a modern European craftsman
to imitate them.
Perhaps no race has shown in its earlier develop-
ment a more magnificent art impulse than the
Negro, and the student must not forget how far
Negro genius entered into the art in the valley
of the Nile from Meroe and Nepata down to the
great temples of Egypt.
Frobenius has recently directed the world’s
attention to art in West Africa. Quartz and
granite he found treated with great dexterity.
But more magnificent than the stone monument
is the proof that at some remote era glass was
made and molded in Yorubaland and that the
people here were brilliant in the production of
terra-cotta images. The great mass of potsherds,
lumps of glass, heaps of slag, etc., “proves, at
all events, that the glass industry flourished in
this locality in ages past. It is plain that the
glass beads found to have been so very common
1 Frobenius: Voice of Africa, Vol. I, Chap. XIV.
AFRICAN CULTURE
135
in Africa were not only not imported, but were
actually manufactured in great quantities at
home.”
The terra-cotta pieces are “remains of another
ancient and fine type of art” and were “eloquent
of a symmetry, a vitality, a delicacy of form, and
practically a reminiscence of the ancient Greeks.”
The antique bronze head Frobenius describes as
“a head of marvelous beauty, wonderfully cast,”
and “almost equal in beauty and, at least, no
less noble in form, and as ancient as the terra-
cotta heads.” 1
In a park of monuments Frobenius saw the
celebrated forge and hammer: a mighty mass
of iron, like a falling drop in shape, and a block
of quartz fashioned like a drum. Frobenius thinks
these were relics dating from past ages of culture,
when the manipulation of quartz and granite
was thoroughly understood and when iron manip-
ulation gave evidence of a skill not met with
to-day.
Even when we contemplate such revolting
survivals of savagery as cannibalism we cannot
jump too quickly at conclusions. Cannibalism
is spread over many parts of Negro Africa, yet
the very tribes who practice cannibalism show
often other traits of industry and power. “ These
cannibal Bassonga were, according to the types
we met with, one of those rare nations of the
African interior which can be classed with the
most esthetic and skilled, most discreet and in-
1 Frobenius: Voice of Africa, Vol. I.
136
THE NEGRO
telligent of all those generally known to us as the
so-called natural races. Before the Arabic and
European invasion they did not dwell in ‘ham-
lets,’ but in towns with twenty or thirty thousand
inhabitants, in towns whose highways were
shaded by avenues of splendid palms planted at
regular intervals and laid out with the symmetry
of colonnades. Their pottery would be fertile
in suggestion to every art craftsman in Europe.
Their weapons of iron were so perfectly fashioned
that no industrial art from abroad could improve
upon their workmanship. The iron blades were
cunningly ornamented with damascened copper,
and the hilts artistically inlaid with the same
metal. Moreover, they were most industrious
and capable husbandmen, whose careful tillage
of the suburbs made them able competitors of
any gardener in Europe. Their sexual and pa-
rental relations evidenced an amount of tact
and delicacy of feelings unsurpassed among our-
selves, either in the simplicity of the country or
the refinements of the town. Originally their
political and municipal system was organized
on the lines of a representative republic. True,
it is on record that these well-governed towns
often waged an internecine warfare; but in
spite of this it had been their invariable custom
from time immemorial, even in times of strife,
to keep the trade routes open and to allow their
own and foreign merchants to go their ways
unharmed. And the commerce of these nations
ebbed and flowed along a road of unknown age,
AFRICAN CULTURE
137
running from Itimbiri to Batubenge, about six
hundred miles in length. This highway was
destroyed by the ‘missionaries of civilization’
from Arabia only toward the close of the eight-
eenth century. But even in my own time there
were still smiths who knew the names of places
along that wonderful trade route driven through
the heart of the ‘impenetrable forests of the
Congo.’ For every scrap of imported iron was
carried over it.” 1
In disposition the Negro is among the most
lovable of men. Practically all the great travelers
who have spent any considerable time in Africa
testify to this and pay deep tribute to the kind-
ness with which they were received. One has
but to remember the classic story of Mungo Park,
the strong expressions of Livingstone, the words
of Stanley and hundreds of others to realize this.
Ceremony and courtesy mark Negro life.
Livingstone again and again reminds us of “true
African dignity.” “When Uifian men or women
salute each other, be it with a plain and easy
curtsey (which is here the simplest form adopted),
or kneeling down, or throwing oneself upon the
ground, or kissing the dust with one’s forehead,
no matter which, there is yet a deliberateness,
a majesty, a dignity, a devoted earnestness in
the manner of its doing, which brings to light
with every gesture, with every fold of clothing, the
deep significance and essential import of every
single action. Everyone may, without too
1 Frobenius: Voice of Africa. I, 14-15.
138
THE NEGRO
greatly straining his attention, notice the very
striking precision and weight with which the
upper and lower native classes observe these
niceties of intercourse.” 1
All this does not mean that the African Negro
is not human with the all-too-well-known foibles
of humanity. Primitive life among them is, after
all, as bare and cruel as among primitive Ger-
mans or Chinese, but it is not more so, and the
more we study the Negro the more we realize
that we are dealing with a normal human stock
which under reasonable conditions has developed
and will develop in the same lines as other men.
Why is it, then, that so much of misinformation
and contempt is widespread concerning Africa
and its people, not simply among the unthinking
mass, but among men of education and knowledge?
One reason lies undoubtedly in the connota-
tion of the term “Negro.” In North America
a Negro may be seven-eighths white, since the
term refers to any person of Negro descent. If
we use the term in the same sense concerning
the inhabitants of the rest of the world, we may
say truthfully that Negroes have been among
the leaders of civilization in every age of the
world’s history from ancient Babylon to modern
America; that they have contributed wonderful
gifts in art, industry, political organization, and
religion, and that they are doing the same to-day
in all parts of the world.
In sharp contrast to this usage the term “Negro ”
1 Frobenius : Voice of Africa, I, 272.
AFRICAN CULTURE
139
in Africa has been more and more restricted until
some scientists, late in the last century, declared
that the great mass of the black and brown people
of Africa were not Negroes at all, and that the
“real” Negro dwells in a small space between the
Niger and the Senegal. Ratzel says, “If we ask
what justifies so narrow a limitation, we find that
the hideous Negro type, which the fancy of ob-
servers once saw all over Africa, but which, as
Livingstone says, is really to be seen only as a
sign in front of tobacco shops, has on closer in-
spection evaporated from all parts of Africa, to
settle no one knows how in just this region. If
we understand that an extreme case may have
been taken for the genuine and pure form, even
so we do not comprehend the ground of its geo-
graphical limitation and location; for wherever
dark, woolly-haired men dwell, this ugly type
also crops up. We are here in the presence of a
refinement of science which to an unprejudiced
eye will hardly hold water.” 1
In this restricted sense the Negro has no his-
tory, culture, or ability, for the simple fact that
such human beings as have history and evidence
culture and ability are not Negroes! Between
these two extreme definitions, with unconscious
adroitness, the most extraordinary and contra-
dictory conclusions have been reached.
Let it therefore be said, once for all, that racial
inferiority is not the cause of anti-Negro prejudice.
Boaz, the anthropologist, says, “An unbiased
1 Ratzel: History of Mankind, II, 313.
140
THE NEGRO
estimate of the anthropological evidence so far
brought forward does not permit us to coun-
tenance the belief in a racial inferiority which
would unfit an individual of the Negro race to
take his part in modern civilization. We do not
know of any demand made on the human body
or mind in modern life that anatomical or eth-
nological evidence would prove to be beyond the
powers of the Negro.” 1
“We have every reason to suppose that all
races are capable, under proper guidance, of being
fitted into the complex scheme of our modern
civilization, and' the policy of artificially exclud-
ing them from its benefits is as unjustifiable
scientifically as it is ethically abhorrent.” 2
What is, then, this so-called “instinctive” mod-
ern prejudice against black folk?
Lord Bryce says of the intermingling of blacks
and whites in South America, “The ease with
which the Spaniards have intermingled by mar-
riage with the Indian tribes — and the Portuguese
have done the like, not only with the Indians, but
with the more physically dissimilar Negroes —
shows that race repugnance is no such constant
and permanent factor in human affairs as mem-
bers of the Teutonic peoples are apt to assume.
Instead of being, as we Teutons suppose, the rule
in the matter, we are rather the exception, for
in the ancient w'orld there seems to have been
little race repulsion.”
1 Atlanta University Publications, No. 11.
2 Robert Lowie in the New Review, Sept., 1914.
AFRICAN CULTURE
141
In nearly every age and land men of Negro
descent have distinguished themselves. In
literature there is Terence in Rome, Nosseyeb
and Antar in Arabia, Es-Sa’di in the Sudan, Push-
kin in Russia, Dumas in France, A1 Kanemi in
Spain, Heredia in the West Indies, and Dunbar
in the United States, not to mention the alleged
Negro strain in iEsop and Robert Browning. As
rulers and warriors we remember such Negroes
as Queen Nefertari and Amenhotep III among
many others in Egypt; Candace and Ergamenes
in Ethiopia; Mansa Musa, Sonni Ah, and Moham-
med Askia in the Sudan; Diaz in Brazil, Tous-
saint L’Ouverture in Hay ti, Hannivalov in Russia,
Sakanouye Tamuramaro in Japan, the elder
Dumas in France, Calembe and Chaka among the
Bantu, and Menelik, of Abyssinia; the number-
less black leaders of India, and the mulatto strain
of Alexander Hamilton. In music and art we
recall Bridgewater, the friend of Beethoven,
and the unexplained complexion of Beethoven’s
own father; Coleridge-Taylor in England, Tanner
in America, Gomez in Spain; Ira Aldridge, the
actor, and Johnson, Cook, and Burleigh, who
are making the new American syncopated music.
In the Church we know that Negro blood coursed
in the veins of many of the Catholic African
fathers, if not in certain of the popes; and there
were in modern days Benoit of Palermo, St.
Benedict, Bishop Crowther, the Mahdi who
drove England from the Sudan, and Americans
like Allen, Lot Carey, and Alexander Crummell.
142
THE NEGRO
In science, discovery, and invention the Negroes
claim Lislet Geoff roy of the French Academy,
Latino and Amo, well known in European uni-
versity circles; and in America the explorers
Doran tes and Henson; Banneker, the almanac
maker; Wood, the telephone improver; McCoy,
inventor of modern lubrication; Matseliger, who
revolutionized shoemaking. Here are names
representing all degrees of genius and talent from
the mediocre to the highest, but they are strong
human testimony to the ability of this race.
We must, then, look for the origin of modern
color prejudice not to physical or cultural causes,
but to historic facts. And we shall find the
answer in modern Negro slavery and the slave
trade.
CHAPTER IX
THE TRADE IN MEN
Color was never a badge of slavery in the
ancient or medieval world, nor has it been in the
modern world outside of Christian states. Homer
sings of a black man, a “reverend herald”
Of visage solemn, sad, but sable hue.
Short, woolly curls, o’erfleeced his bending head, . . .
Eurybiates, in whose large soul alone,
Ulysses viewed an image of his own.
Greece and Rome had their chief supplies of
slaves from Europe and Asia. Egypt enslaved
races of all colors, and if there were more blacks
than others among her slaves, there were also
more blacks among her nobles and Pharaohs,
and both facts are explained by her racial origin
and geographical position. The fall of Rome
led to a cessation of the slave trade, but after a
long interval came the white slave trade of the
Saracens and Moors, and finally the modern
trade in Negroes.
Slavery as it exists universally among primitive
people is a system whereby captives in war are
put to tasks about the homes and in the fields,
thus releasing the warriors for systematic fight-
143
144
THE NEGRO
ing and the women for leisure. Such slavery has
been common among all peoples and was wide-
spread in Africa. The relative number of African
slaves under these conditions was small and the
labor not hard; they were members of the family
and might and did often rise to high position in
the tribe.
Remembering that in the fifteenth century
there was no great disparity between the civiliza-
tion of Negroland and that of Europe, what
made the striking difference in subsequent
development? European civilization, cut off by
physical barriers from further incursions of bar-
baric races, settled more and more to systematic
industry and to the domination of one religion;
African culture and industries were threatened
by powerful barbarians from the west and central
regions of the continent and by the Moors in
the north, and Islam had only partially converted
the leading peoples.
When, therefore, a demand for workmen arose
in America, European exportation was limited
by religious ties and economic stability. African
exportation was encouraged not simply by the
Christian attitude toward heathen, but also by
the Moslem enmity toward the unconverted
Negroes. Two great modern religions, there-
fore, agreed at least in the policy of enslaving
heathen blacks, while the overthrow of black
Askias by the Moors at Tenkadibou brought
that economic chaos among the advanced Negro
peoples and movement among the more barbar-
THE TRADE IN MEN
145
ous tribes which proved of prime advantage to
the development of a systematic trade in men.
The modern slave trade began with the Mo-
hammedan conquests in Africa, when heathen
Negroes were seized to supply the harems, and
as soldiers and servants. They were bought
from the masters and seized in war, until the
growing wealth and luxury of the conquerors
demanded larger numbers. Then Negroes from
the Egyptian Sudan, Abyssinia, and Zanzibar
began to pass into Arabia, Persia, and India in
increased numbers. As Negro kingdoms and
tribes rose to power they found the slave trade
lucrative and natural, since the raids in which
slaves were captured were ordinary inter-tribal
wars. It was not until the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries that the demand for slaves in
Christian lands made slaves the object, and not
the incident, of African wars.
In Mohammedan countries there were gleams
of hope in slavery. In fiction and in truth the
black slave had a chance. Once converted to
Islam, he became a brother to the best, and the
brotherhood of the faith was not the sort of idle
lie that Christian slave masters made it. In
Arabia black leaders arose like Antar; in India
black slaves carved out principalities where their
descendants still rule.
Some Negro slaves were brought to Europe by
the Spaniards in the fourteenth century, and
a small trade was continued by the Portuguese,
who conquered territory from the “tawny”
146
THE NEGRO
Moors of North Africa in the early fifteenth
century. Later, after their severe repulse at Al-
Kasr-Al-Kabu, the Portuguese began to creep
down the west coast in quest of trade. They
reached the River of Gold in 1441, and their
story is that their leader seized certain free
Moors and the next year exchanged them for
ten black slaves, a target of hide, ostrich eggs,
and some gold dust. The trade was easily justi-
fied on the ground that the Moors were Moham-
medans and refused to be converted to Chris-
tianity, while heathen Negroes would be better
subjects for conversion and stronger laborers.
In the next few years a small number of Negroes
continued to be imported into Spain and Portu-
gal as servants. We find, for instance, in 1474,
that Negro slaves were common in Seville. There
is a letter from Ferdinand and Isabella in the
year 1474 to a celebrated Negro, Juan de Valla-
dolid, commonly called the “Negro Count”
(El Conde Negro), nominating him to the office
of “mayoral of the Negroes” in Seville. The
slaves were apparently treated kindly, allowed
to keep their own dances and festivals, and to
have their own chief, who represented them in the
courts, as against their own masters, and settled
their private quarrels.
Between 1455 and 1492 little mention is made
of slaves in the trade with Africa. Columbus is
said to have suggested Negroes for America, but
Ferdinand and Isabella refused. Nevertheless,
by 1501, we have the first incidental mention of
THE TRADE IN MEN
147
Negroes going to America in a declaration that
Negro slaves “born in the power of Christians
were to be allowed to pass to the Indies, and the
officers of the royal revenue were to receive the
money to be paid for their permits.”
About 1501 Ovando, Governor of Spanish
America, was objecting to Negro slaves and
“solicited that no Negro slaves should be sent
to Hispaniola, for they fled amongst the Indians
and taught them bad customs, and never could
be captured.” Nevertheless a letter from the
king to Ovando, dated Segovia, the fifteenth of
September, 1505, says, “I will send more Negro
slaves as you request; I think there may be a
hundred. At each time a trustworthy person
will go with them who may have some share in
the gold they may collect and may promise them
ease if they work well.” 1 There is a record of a
hundred slaves being sent out this very year, and
Diego Columbus was notified of fifty to be sent
from Seville for the mines in 1510.
After this time frequent notices show that
Negroes were common in the new world.2 When
Pizarro, for instance, had been slain in Peru,
his body was dragged to the cathedral by two
Negroes. After the battle of Anaquito the head
of the viceroy was cut off by a Negro, and during
the great earthquake in Guatemala a most re-
markable figure was a gigantic N egro seen in various
parts of the city. Nunez had thirty Negroes with
1 Cf. Helps: Spanish Conquest, IV, 401.
* Helps, op. cit., I, 210-220.
148
THE NEGRO
him on the top of the Sierras, and there was
rumor of an aboriginal tribe of Negroes in South
America. One of the last acts of King Ferdinand
was to urge that no more Negroes be sent to the
West Indies, but under Charles V, Bishop Las
Casas drew up a plan of assisted migration to
America and asked in 1517 the right for immi-
grants to import twelve Negro slaves, in return
for which the Indians were to be freed.
Las Casas, writing in his old age, owns his
error: “This advice that license should be given
to bring Negro slaves to these lands, the Clerigo
Casas first gave, not considering the injustice
with which the Portuguese take them and make
them slaves; which advice, after he had appre-
hended the nature of the thing, he would not have
given for all he had in the world. For he always
held that they had been made slaves unjustly
and tyrannically; for the same reason holds good
of them as of the Indians.” 1
As soon as the plan was broached a Savoyard,
Lorens de Gomenot, Governor of Bresa, obtained
a monopoly of this proposed trade and shrewdly
sold it to the Genoese for twenty-five thousand
ducats. Other monopolies were granted in 1523,
1527, and 1528. 2 Thus the American trade be-
came established and gradually grew, passing suc-
cessively into the hands of the Portuguese, the
Dutch, the French, and the English.
At first the trade was of the same kind and
1 Helps, op. cit., II, 18-19.
* Helps, op. cit.. Ill, 211-212.
THE TRADE IN MEN
149
volume as that already passing northward over
the desert routes. Soon, however, the American
trade developed. A strong, unchecked demand
for brute labor in the West Indies and on the con-
tinent of America grew until it culminated in
the eighteenth century, when Negro slaves were
crossing the Atlantic at the rate of fifty to one
hundred thousand a year. This called for slave
raiding on a scale that drew upon every part of
Africa — upon the west coast, the western and
Egyptian Sudan, the valley of the Congo, Abys-
sinia, the lake regions, the east coast, and Mada-
gascar. Not simply the degraded and weaker
types of Negroes were seized, but the strong
Bantu, the Mandingo and Songhay, the Nubian
and Nile Negroes, the Fula, and even the Asiatic
Malay, were represented in the raids.
There was thus begun in modern days a new
slavery and slave trade. It was different from
that of the past, because more and more it came
in time to be founded on racial caste, and this
caste was made the foundation of a new industrial
system. For four hundred years, from 1450 to
1850, European civilization carried on a system-
atic trade in human beings of such tremendous
proportions that the physical, economic, and
moral effects are still plainly to be remarked
throughout the world. To this must be added the
large slave trade of Mussulman lands, which
began with the seventh century and raged almost
unchecked until the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury.
150
THE NEGRO
These were not days of decadence, but a period
that gave the world Shakespeare, Martin Luther,
and Raphael, Haroun-al-Raschid and Abraham
Lincoln. It was the day of the greatest expansion
of two of the world’s most pretentious religions
and of the beginnings of the modern organization
of industry. In the midst of this advance and
uplift this slave trade and slavery spread more
human misery, inculcated more disrespect for
and neglect of humanity, a greater callousness to
suffering, and more petty, cruel, human hatred
than can well be calculated. We may excuse and
palliate it, and write history so as to let men
forget it; it remains the most inexcusable and
despicable blot on modern human history.
The Portuguese built the first slave-trading
fort at Elmina, on the Gold Coast, in 1482, and
extended their trade down the west coast and
up the east coast. Under them the abominable
traffic grew larger and larger, until it became far
the most important in money value of all the
commerce of the Zambesi basin. There could be
no extension of agriculture, no mining, no prog-
ress of any kind where it was so extensively car-
ried on.1
It was the Dutch, however, who launched the
oversea slave trade as a regular institution.
They began their fight for freedom from Spain
in 1579; in 1595, as a war measure against Spain,
who at that time was dominating Portugal, they
1 Theal: History and Ethnography of South Africa before
1795, I, 476.
THE TRADE IN MEN
151
made their first voyage to Guinea. By 1621 they
had captured Portugal’s various slave forts on
the west coast and they proceeded to open sixteen
forts along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea.
Ships sailed from Holland to Africa, got slaves
in exchange for their goods, carried the slaves to
the West Indies or Brazil, and returned home
laden with sugar. In 1621 the private compa-
nies trading in the west were all merged into the
Dutch West India Company, which sent in four
years fifteen thousand four hundred and thirty
Negroes to Brazil, carried on war with Spain,
supplied even the English plantations, and grad-
ually became the great slave carrier of the
day.
The commercial supremacy of the Dutch
early excited the envy and emulation of the
English. The Navigation Ordinance of 1651 was
aimed at them, and two wars were necessary to
wrest the slave trade from them and place it in
the hands of the English. The final terms of
peace, among other things, surrendered New
Netherlands to England and opened the way for
England to become henceforth the world’s greatest
slave trader.
The English trade began with Sir John Haw-
kins’ voyages in 1562 and later, in which “the
Jesus, our chiefe shippe” played a leading part.
Desultory trade was kept up by the English
until the middle of the seventeenth century,
when English chartered slave-trading companies
began to appear. In 1662 the “Royal Adven-
152
THE NEGRO
turers,” including the king, the queen dowager,
and the Duke of York, invested in the trade,
and finally the Royal African Company, which
became the world’s chief slave trader, was
formed in 1672 and carried on a growing trade for
a quarter of a century. Jamaica had finally
been captured and held by Oliver Cromwell in
1655 and formed a West Indian base for the trade
in men.
The chief contract for trade in Negroes was
the celebrated “Asiento” or agreement of the
King of Spain to the importation of slaves into
Spanish domains. The Pope’s Bull or Demark-
ation, 1493, debarred Spain from African posses-
sions, and compelled her to contract with other
nations for slaves. This contract was in the
hands of the Portuguese in 1600; in 1640 the
Dutch received it, and in 1701 the French. The
War of the Spanish Succession brought this mo-
nopoly to England.
This Asiento of 1713 was an agreement be-
tween England and Spain by which the latter
granted the former a monopoly of the Spanish
colonial slave trade for thirty years, and England
engaged to supply the colonies within that time
with at least one hundred and forty-four thou-
sand slaves at the rate of forty-eight hundred per
year. The English counted this prize as the
greatest result of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713),
which ended the mighty struggle against the
power of Louis XIV. The English held the
monopoly until the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle
THE TRADE IN MEN
153
(1748), although, they had to go to war over it in
1739.
From this agreement the slave traders reaped
a harvest. The trade centered at Liverpool, and
that city’s commercial greatness was built largely
on this foundation. In 1709 it sent out one slaver
of thirty tons’ burden; encouraged by Parlia-
mentary subsidies which amounted to nearly half
a million dollars between 1729 and 1750, the
trade amounted to fifty-three ships in 1751;
eighty-six in 1765, and at the beginning of the
nineteenth century one hundred and eighty-
five, which carried forty-nine thousand two hun-
dred and thirteen slaves in one year.
The slave trade thus begun by the Portuguese,
enlarged by the Dutch, and carried to its cul-
mination by the English centered on the west
coast near the seat of perhaps the oldest and
most interesting culture of Africa. It came at a
critical time. The culture of Yoruba, Benin,
Mossiland, and Nupe had exhausted itself in a
desperate attempt to stem the on-coming flood
of Mohammedan culture. It had succeeded in
maintaining its small, loosely federated city-
states suited to trade, industry, and art. It had
developed strong resistance toward the Sudan
state builders toward the north, as in the case
l of the fighting Mossi; but behind this warlike
resistance lay the peaceful city life which gave
industrial ideas to Byzantium and shared some-
thing of Ethiopian and Mediterranean culture.
The first advent of the slave traders increased
154
THE NEGRO
and encouraged native industry, as is evidenced
by the bronze work of Benin; but soon this was
pushed into the background, for it was not bronze
metal but bronze flesh that Europe wanted. A
new tyranny, bloodthirsty, cruel, and built on
war, forced itself forward in the Niger delta.
The powerful state of Dahomey arose early in
the eighteenth century and became a devastating
tyranny, reaching its highest power early in the
nineteenth century. Ashanti, a similar kingdom,
began its conquests in 1719 and grew with the
slave trade. Thus state building in West Africa
began to replace the city economy, but it was a
state built on war and on war supported and en-
couraged largely for the sake of trade in human
flesh. The native industries were changed and
disorganized. Family ties and government were
weakened. Far into the heart of Africa this
devilish disintegration, coupled with Christian
rum and Mohammedan raiding, penetrated.
The face of Africa was turned south on these
slave traders instead of northward toward the
Mediterranean, where for two thousand years
and more Europe and Africa had met in legiti-
mate trade and mutual respect. The full sig-
nificance of the battle of Tenkadibou, which
overthrew the Askias, was now clear. Hereafter
Africa for centuries was to appear before the
world, not as the land of gold and ivory, of
Mansa Musa and Meroe, but as a bound and cap-
tive slave, dumb and degraded.
The natural desire to avoid a painful subject
THE TRADE IN MEN
155
has led historians to gloss over the details of
the slave trade and leave the impression that it
was a local west-coast phenomenon and confined
to a few years. It was, on the contrary, continent
wide and centuries long and an economic, social,
and political catastrophe probably unparalleled
in human history.
The exact proportions of the slave trade can
be estimated only approximately. From 1680
to 1688 we know that the English African Com-
pany alone sent 249 ships to Africa, shipped
there 60,783 Negro slaves, and after losing 14,387
on the middle passage, delivered 46,396 in Amer-
ica.
It seems probable that 25,000 Negroes a year
arrived in America between 1698 and 1707.
After the Asiento of 1713 this number rose to
30.000 annually, and before the Revolutionary
War it had reached at least 40,000 and perhaps
100.000 slaves a year.
The total number of slaves imported is not
known. Dunbar estimates that nearly 900,000
came to America in the sixteenth century,
2.750.000 in the seventeenth, 7,000,000 in the
eighteenth, and over 4,000,000 in the nineteenth,
perhaps 15,000,000 in all. Certainly it seems
that at least 10,000,000 Negroes were expatriated.
Probably every slave imported represented on
the average five corpses in Africa or on the high
seas. The American slave trade, therefore,
meant the elimination of at least 60,000,000
Negroes from their fatherland. The Mohamme-
156
THE NEGRO
dan slave trade meant the expatriation or forci-
ble migration in Africa of nearly as many more.
It would be conservative, then, to say that the
slave trade cost Negro Africa 100,000,000 souls.
And yet people ask to-day the cause of the stag-
nation of culture in that land since 1600!
Such a large number of slaves could be sup-
plied only by organized slave raiding in every
corner of Africa. The African continent gradually
became revolutionized. Whole regions were de-
populated, whole tribes disappeared; villages were
built in caves and on hills or in forest fastnesses;
the character of peoples like those of Benin
developed their worst excesses of cruelty instead
of the already flourishing arts of peace. The dark,
irresistible grasp of fetish took firmer hold on
men’s minds.
Further advances toward civilization became
impossible. Not only was there the immense
demand for slaves which had its outlet on the
west coast, but the slave caravans were stream-
ing up through the desert to the Mediterranean
coast and down the valley of the Nile to the cen-
ters of Mohammedanism. It was a rape of a
continent to an extent never paralleled in an-
cient or modern times.
In the American trade there was not only the
horrors of the slave raid, which lined the winding
paths of the African jungles with bleached bones,
but there was also the horrors of what was called
the “middle passage,” that is, the voyage across
the Atlantic. As Sir William Dolben said.
THE TRADE IN MEN
157
“The Negroes were chained to each other hand
and foot, and stowed so close that they were not
allowed above a foot and a half for each in
breadth. Thus crammed together like herrings
in a barrel, they contracted putrid and fatal dis-
orders; so that they who came to inspect them
in a morning had occasionally to pick dead slaves
out of their rows, and to unchain their carcases
from the bodies of their wretched fellow-sufferers
to whom they had been fastened.” 1
It was estimated that out of every one hundred
lot shipped from Africa only about fifty lived to
be effective laborers across the sea, and among
the whites more seamen died in that trade in
one year than in the whole remaining trade of
England in two. The full realization of the
horrors of the slave trade was slow in reaching
the ears and conscience of the modern world,
just as to-day the treatment of dark natives in
European colonies is brought to publicity with
the greatest difficulty. The first move against
the slave trade in England came in Parliament in
1776, but it was not until thirty-one years later,
in 1807, that the trade was banned through the
arduous labors of Clarkson, Wilberforce, Sharpe,
and others.
Denmark had already abolished the trade, and
the United States attempted to do so the fol-
lowing year. Portugal and Spain were induced
to abolish the trade between 1815 and 1830.
Notwithstanding these laws, the contraband
1 Ingram : History of Slavery, p. 152.
158
THE NEGRO
trade went on until the beginning of the Civil
War in America. The reasons for this were the
enormous profit of the trade and the continued
demand of the American slave barons, who had
no sympathy with the efforts to stop their source
of cheap labor supply.
However, philanthropy was not working
alone to overthrow Negro slavery and the slave
trade. It was seen, first in England and later in
other countries, that slavery as an industrial
system could not be made to work satisfactorily
in modern times. Its cost was too great, and one
of the causes of this cost was the slave insur-
rections from the very beginning, when the slaves
rose on the plantation of Diego Columbus down
to the Civil War in America. Actual and po-
tential slave insurrection in the West Indies, in
North and South America, kept the slave owners
in apprehension and turmoil, or called for a
police system difficult to maintain. In North
America revolt finally took the form of organized
running away to the North, and this, with the
growing scarcity of suitable land and the moral
revolt, led to the Civil War and the disap-
pearance of the American slave trade.
There was still, however, the Mohammedan
slave trade to deal with, and this has been the
work of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. In the last quarter of the nineteenth
century ten thousand slaves annually were being
distributed on the southern and eastern coast of
the Mediterranean and at the great slave market
in Bornu.
THE TRADE IN MEN
159
On the east coast of Africa in 1862 nineteen
thousand slaves were passed into Zanzibar and
thence into Arabia and Persia. As late as 1880,
three thousand annually were being thus trans-
planted, but now the trade is about stopped.
To-day the only centers of actual slave trading
may be said to be the cocoa plantations of the
Portuguese Islands on the west coast of Africa,
and the Congo Free State.
Such is the story of the Rape of Ethiopia —
a sordid, pitiful, cruel tale. Raphael painted,
Luther preached, Corneille wrote, and Milton
sung; and through it all, for four hundred years,
the dark captives wound to the sea amid the
bleaching bones of the dead; for four hundred
years the sharks followed the scurrying ships;
for four hundred years America was strewn with
the living and dying millions of a transplanted
race; for four hundred years Ethiopia stretched
forth her hands unto God.
CHAPTER X
THE WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA
That was a wonderful century, the fifteenth,
when men realized that beyond the scowling
waste of western waters were dreams come true.
Curious and yet crassly human it is that, with
all this poetry and romance, arose at once the
filthiest institution of the modern world and the
costliest. For on Negro slavery in America was
built, not simply the abortive cotton kingdom,
but the foundations of that modern imperialism
which is based on the despising of backward men.
According to some accounts Alonzo, “the
Negro,” piloted one of the ships of Columbus,
and certainly there was Negro blood among his
sailors. As early as 1528 there were nearly
ten thousand Negroes in the new world. We
hear of them in all parts. In Honduras, for in-
stance, a Negro is sent to burn a native village;
in 1555 the town council of Santiago de Chile
voted to allow an enfranchised Negro possession
of land in the town, and evidently treated him
just as white applicants were treated. D’Allyon,
who explored the coast of Virginia in the first
quarter of the sixteenth century, used Negro
slaves (who afterward revolted) to build his
160
WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA 161
ships and help in exploration; Balboa had with
him thirty Negroes, who, in 1513, helped to
build the first ships on the Pacific coast; Cortez
had three hundred Negro porters in 1522.
Before 1530 there were enough Negroes in
Mexico to lead to an insurrection, where the
Negroes fought desperately, but were overcome
and their ringleaders executed. Later the fol-
lowers of another Negro insurgent, Bayano,
wrere captured and sent back to Spain. Negroes
founded the town of Santiago del Principe in
1570, and in 1540 a Negro slave of Hernandez
de Alarcon was the only one of the party to carry
a message across the country to the Zunis of
New Mexico. A Negro, Stephen Dorantes,
discovered New Mexico. This Stephen or
“ Estevanico ” was sent ahead by certain Spanish
friars to the “Seven Cities of Cibola.” “As soon
as Stephen had left said friars, he determined to
earn all the reputation and honor for himself, and
that the boldness and daring of having alone
discovered those villages of high stories so much
spoken of throughout that country should be
attributed to him; and carrying along with him
the people who followed him, he endeavored to
cross the wilderness which is between Cibola and
the country he had gone through, and he was so
far ahead of the friars that when they arrived
at Chichilticalli, which is on the edge of the wil-
derness, he was already at Cibola, which is
eighty leagues of wilderness beyond.” But the
Indians of the new and strange country took
282
THE NEGRO
alarm and concluded that Stephen “must be a
spy or guide for some nations who intended to
come and conquer them, because it seemed to
them unreasonable for him to say that the people
were white in the country from which he came,
being black himself and being sent by them.” 1
Slaves imported under the Asiento treaties
went to all parts of the Americas. Spanish Amer-
ica had by the close of the eighteenth century
ten thousand in Santo Domingo, eighty-four
thousand in Cuba, fifty thousand in Porto Rico,
sixty thousand in Louisiana and Florida, and
sixty thousand in Central and South America.
The history of the Negro in Spanish America
centered in Cuba, Venezuela, and Central America.
In the sixteenth century slaves began to arrive
in Cuba and Negroes joined many of the explor-
ing expeditions from there to various parts of
America. The slave trade greatly increased in
the latter part of the eighteenth century, and after
the revolution in Hayti large numbers of French
emigrants from that island settled in Cuba. This
and Spanish greed increased the harshness of
slavery and eventually led to revolt among the
Negroes. In 1844 Governor O’Donnell began a
cruel persecution of the blacks on account of a
plot discovered among them. Finally in 1866 the
Ten Years’ War broke out in which Negro and
white rebels joined. They demanded the abolition
of slavery and equal political rights for natives
1 H. O. Flipper’s translation of Castaneda de Naf era’s
narrative.
WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA 163
and foreigners, whites and blacks. The war was
cruel and bloody but ended in 1878 with the
abolition of slavery, while a further uprising the
following year secured civil rights for Negroes.
Spanish economic oppression continued, however,
and the leading chiefs of the Ten Years’ War
including such leaders as the mulatto, Antonio
Maceo, with large numbers of Negro soldiers,
took the field again in 1895. The result was the
freeing of Cuba by the intervention of the United
States. Negro regiments from the United States
played here a leading role. A number of leaders
in Cuba in political, industrial, and literary lines
have been men of Negro descent.
Slavery was abolished by Guatemala in 1824
and by Mexico in 1829. Argentine, Peru,
Bolivia, Chile, and Paraguay ceased to recog-
nize it about 1825. Between 1840 and 1845 it
came to an end in Colombia, Venezuela, and
Ecquador. Bolivar, Paez, Sucre, and other
South American leaders used Negro soldiers in
fighting for freedom (1814-16), and Hayti twice
at critical times rendered assistance and received
Bolivar twice as a refugee.
Brazil was the center of Portuguese slavery,
but slaves were not introduced in large numbers
until about 1720, when diamonds were discovered
in the territory above Rio Janeiro. Gradually
the seaboard from Pernambuco to Rio Janeiro
and beyond became filled with Negroes, and
although the slave trade north of the equator
was theoretically abolished by Portugal in 1815
164
THE NEGRO
and south of the equator in 1830, and by Brazil
in these regions in 1826 and 1830, nevertheless
between 1825 and 1850 over a million and a quar-
ter of Negroes were introduced. Not until
Brazil abolished slavery in 1888 did the importa-
tion wholly cease. Brazilian slavery allowed
the slave to purchase his freedom, and the color
line was not strict. Even in the eighteenth cen-
tury there were black clergy and bishops;
indeed the Negro clergy seem to have been on a
higher moral level than the whites.
Insurrection was often attempted, especially
among the Mohammedan Negroes around Bahia.
In 1695 a tribe of revolted slaves held out for a
long time. In 1719 a widespread conspiracy
failed, but many of the leaders fled to the forest.
In 1828 a thousand rose in revolt at Bahia, and
again in 1830. From 1831 to 1837 revolt was in
the air, and in 1835 came the great revolt of the
Mohammedans, who attempted to enthrone a
queen. The Negroes fought with furious bravery,
but were finally defeated.
By 1872 the number of free Negroes had very
greatly increased, so that emancipation did not
come as a shock. While Mohammedan Negroes
still gave trouble and were in some cases sent
back to Africa, yet on the whole emancipation
was peaceful, and whites, Negroes, and Indians
are to-day amalgamating into a new race. “At
the present moment there is scarcely a lowly or a
highly placed federal or provincial official at the
head of or within any of the great departments
WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA 165
of state that has not more or less Negro or
Amer-Indian blood in his veins.” 1
Lord Bryce says, “It is hardly too much to
say that along the coast from Rio to Bahia and
Pernambuco, as well as in parts of the interior
behind these two cities, the black population
predominates. . . . The Brazilian lower class inter-
marries freely with the black people; the Brazil-
ian middle class intermarries with mulattoes
and Quadroons. Brazil is the one country in
the world, besides the Portuguese colonies on
the east and west coasts of Africa, in which a
fusion of the European and African races is
proceeding unchecked by law or custom. The
doctrines of human equality and human solidar-
ity have here their perfect work. The result is
so far satisfactory that there is little or no class
friction. The white man does not lynch or
maltreat the Negro; indeed I have never
heard of a lynching anywhere in South America
except occasionally as part of a political con-
vulsion. The Negro is not accused of insolence
and does not seem to develop any more crimi-
nality than naturally belongs to any ignorant
population with loose notions of morality and
property.
“What ultimate effect the intermixture of
blood will have on the European element in
Brazil I will not venture to predict. If one may
judge from a few remarkable cases, it will not
necessarily reduce the intellectual standard.
1 Johnston: Negro in the New World, p. 109.
166
THE NEGRO
One of the ablest and most refined Brazilians
I have known had some color; and other such
cases have been mentioned to me. Assumptions
and preconceptions must be eschewed, however
plausible they may seem.” 1
A Brazilian writer said at the First Races
Congress: “The cooperation of the metis 2 in
the advance of Brazil is notorious and far from
inconsiderable. They played the chief part
during many years in Brazil in the campaign for
the abolition of slavery. I could quote cele-
brated names of more than one of these metis
who put themselves at the head of the literary
movement. They fought with firmness and
intrepidity in the press and on the platform.
They faced with courage the gravest perils to
which they were exposed in their struggle against
the powerful slave owners, who had the protec-
tion of a conservative government. They gave
evidence of sentiments of patriotism, self-denial,
and appreciation during the long campaign in
Paraguay, fighting heroically at the boarding of
the ships in the naval battle of Riachuelo and
in the attacks on the Brazilian army, on nu-
merous occasions in the course of this long South
American war. It was owing to their support
that the republic was erected on the ruins of the
empire.” 1
The Dutch brought the first slaves to the
1 Bryce: South America, pp. 479-480.
s I.e., mulattoes.
5 Inter-Racial Problems, p. 381.
WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA 167
North American continent. John Rolfe relates
that the last of August, 1619, there came to Vir-
ginia “ a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty
Negars.” 1 This was probably one of the ships
of the numerous private Dutch trading com-
panies which early entered into the developed
and the lucrative African slave trade. Although
the Dutch thus commenced the continental
slave trade they did not actually furnish a very
large number of slaves to the English colonies
outside the West Indies. A small trade had by
1698 brought a few thousand to New York and
still fewer to New Jersey.
The Dutch found better scope for slaves in
Guiana, which they settled in 1616. Sugar cane
became the staple crop, but the Negroes early
began to revolt and the Dutch brought in East
Indian coolies. The slaves were badly treated
and the runaways joined the revolted Bush
Negroes in the interior. From 1715 to 1775 there
was continuous fighting with the Bush Negroes
or insurrections, until at last in 1749 a formal
treaty between sixteen hundred Negroes and the
Dutch was made. Immediately a new group
revolted under a Mohammedan, Arabi, and they
obtained land and liberty. In 1763 the coast
Negroes revolted. They were checked, but made
terms and settled in the interior. The Bush
Negroes fought against both French and English
to save Guiana to the Dutch, but Guiana was
eventually divided between the three. The
1 Smith: General History of Virginia.
168
THE NEGRO
Bush Negroes still maintain their independence
and vigor.
The French encouraged settlements in the
West Indies in the seventeenth century, but at
last, finding that French immigrants would not
come, they began about 1642 to import Negroes.
Owing to wars with England, slaves were supplied
by the Dutch and Portuguese, although the
Royal Senegal Company held the coveted Asiento
from 1701 to 1713.
It was in the island of Hayti, however, that
French slavery centered. Pirates from many
nations, but chiefly French, began to frequent
the island, and in 1663 the French annexed the
eastern part, thus dividing the island between
France and Spain. By 1680 there were so many
slaves and mulattoes that Louis XIV issued his
celebrated Code Noir, which was notable in
compelling bachelor masters, fathers of slave
children, to marry their concubines. Children
followed the condition of the mother as to slavery
or freedom; they could have no property;
harsh punishments were provided for, but
families could not be separated by sale except
in the case of grown children; emancipation
with full civil rights was made possible for any
slave twenty years of age or more. When
Louisiana was settled and the Alabama coast,
slaves were introduced there. Louisiana was
transferred to Spain in 1762, against the resis-
tance of both settlers and slaves, but Spain took
possession in 1769 and introduced more Negroes.
WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA 169
Later, in Hayti, a more liberal policy encour-
aged trade; war was over and capital and slaves
poured in. Sugar, coffee, chocolate, indigo, dyes,
and spices were raised. There were large num-
bers of mulattoes, many of whom were educated
in Erance, and many masters married Negro
women who had inherited large properties, just
as in the United States to-day white men are
marrying eagerly the landed Indian women in
the West. When white immigration increased
in 1749, however, prejudice arose against these
mulattoes and severe laws were passed depriving
them of civil rights, entrance into the professions,
and the right to hold office; severe edicts were
enforced as to clothing, names, and social in-
tercourse. Finally, after 1777, mulattoes were
forbidden to come to France.
When the French Revolution broke out, the
Haytians managed to send two delegates to
Paris. Nevertheless the planters maintained
the upper hand, and one of the colored delegates,
Oge, on returning, started a small rebellion. He
and his companions were killed with great bru-
tality. This led the French government to grant
full civil rights to free Negroes. Immediately
planters and free Negroes flew to arms against
each other and then, suddenly, August 22, 1791,
the black slaves, of whom there were four hundred
and fifty-two thousand, arose in revolt to help
the free Negroes.
For many years runaway slaves had hidden in
the mountains under their own chiefs. One of
170
THE NEGRO
the earliest of these chiefs was Poly dor, in 1724,
who was succeeded by Macandal. The great
chief of these runaways or “Maroons” at the
time of the slave revolt was Jean Frangois, who
was soon succeeded by Biassou.
Pierre Dominic Toussaint, known as Tous-
saint L’Ouverture, joined these Maroon bands,
where he was called “the doctor of the armies of
the king,” and soon became chief aid to Jean
Frangois and Biassou. Upon their deaths Tous-
saint rose to the chief command. He acquired
complete control over the blacks, not only in
military matters, but in politics and social or-
ganization; “the soldiers regarded him as a
superior being, and the farmers prostrated them-
selves before him. All his generals trembled
before him (Dessalines did not dare to look in his
face), and all the world trembled before his
generals.” 1
The revolt once started, blacks and mulattoes
murdered whites without mercy and the whites
retaliated. Commissioners were sent from
France, who asked simply civil rights for freed-
men, and not emancipation. Indeed that was
all that Toussaint himself had as yet demanded.
The planters intrigued with the British and this,
together with the beheading of the king (an
impious act in the eyes of Negroes), induced
Toussaint to join the Spaniards. In 1793 British
troops were landed and the French commissioners
1 La Croix: Mimoires sur la Revolution, I, 253, 408.
WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA 171
in desperation declared the slaves emancipated.
This at once won back Toussaint from the
Spaniards. He became supreme in the north,
while Rigaud, leader of the mulattoes, held the
south and the west. By 1798 the British, having
lost most of their forces by yellow fever, sur-
rendered Mole St. Nicholas to Toussaint and
departed. Rigaud finally left for France, and
Toussaint in 1800 was master of Hayti. He pro-
mulgated a constitution under which Hayti was
to be a self-governing colony; all men were equal
before the law, and trade was practically free.
Toussaint was to be president for life, with the
power to name his successor.
Napoleon Bonaparte, master of France, had
at this time dreams of a great American empire,
and replied to Toussaint’s new government by
sending twenty-five thousand men under his
brother-in-law to subdue the presumptuous
Negroes, as a preliminary step to his occupation
and development of the Mississippi valley. Fierce
fighting and yellow fever decimated the French,
but matters went hard with the Negroes too,
and Toussaint 'finally offered to yield. He was
courteously received with military honors and
then, as soon as possible, treacherously seized,
bound, and sent to France. He was imprisoned
at Fort Joux and died, perhaps of poison, after
studied humiliations, April 7, 1803.
Thus perished the greatest of American Negroes
and one of the great men of all time, at the age
of fifty -six. A French planter said, “God in his
172
THE NEGRO
terrestrial globe did not commune with a purer
spirit.”1 Wendell Phillips said, “Some doubt
the courage of the Negro. Go to Hayti and stand
on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers
France ever had and ask them what they think of
the Negro’s sword. I would call him Napoleon,
but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken
oaths and through a sea of blood. This man never
broke his word. I would call him Cromwell,
but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state
he founded went down with him into his grave.
I would call him Washington, but the great Vir-
ginian held slaves. This man risked his empire
rather than permit the slave trade in the hum-
blest village of his dominions. You think me a
fanatic, for you read history, not with your eyes,
but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence,
when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of history
will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the
Roman, Hampden for the English, La Fayette
for France, choose Washington as the bright,
consummate flower of our earlier civilization,
then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write
in the clear blue, above them all, the name of
the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, Toussaint
L’Ouverture.”
The treacherous killing of Toussaint did not
conquer Hayti. In 1802 and 1803 some forty
thousand French soldiers died of war and fever.
A new colored leader, Dessalines, arose and all
1 Marquis d’Hermonas. Cf. Johnston: Negro in the New
World, p. 158.
WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA 173
the eight thousand remaining French surrendered
to the blockading British fleet.
The effect of all this was far-reaching. Napo-
leon gave up his dream of American empire and
sold Louisiana for a song. “Thus, all of Indian
Territory, all of Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa
and Wyoming and Montana and the Dakotas,
and most of Colorado and Minnesota, and all of
Washington and Oregon states, came to us as the
indirect work of a despised Negro. Praise, if
you will, the work of a Robert Livingstone or a
Jefferson, but to-day let us not forget our debt
to Toussaint L’Ouverture, who was indirectly
the means of America’s expansion by the Louisiana
Purchase of 1803.” 1
With the freedom of Hayti in 1801 came a
century of struggle to fit the people for the
freedom they had won. They were yet slaves,
crushed by a cruel servitude, without education
or religious instruction. The Haytian leaders
united upon Dessalines to maintain the inde-
pendence of the republic. Dessalines, like Tous-
saint and his lieutenant Christophe, was noted in
slavery days for his severity toward his fellows
and the discipline which he insisted on. He had
other characteristics of African chieftains.
“There were seasons when he broke through his
natural sullenness and showed himself open,
affable, and even generous. His vanity was
excessive and manifested itself in singular per-
1 DeWitt Talmage, in Christian Herald , November 28,
1906.
174
THE NEGRO
versities.” 1 He was a man of great personal
bravery and succeeded in maintaining the in-
dependence of Hayti, which had already cost
the Frenchmen fifty thousand lives.
On January 1, 1804, at the place whence
Toussaint had been treacherously seized and
sent to France, the independence of Hayti was
declared by the military leaders. Dessalines was
made governor-general for life and afterward
proclaimed himself emperor. This was not an
act of grandiloquence and mimicry. “It is truer
to say that in it both Dessalines and later Chris-
tophe were actuated by a clear insight into the
social history and peculiarities of their people.
There was nothing in the constitution which did
not have its companion in Africa, where the or-
ganization of society was despotic, with elective-
hereditary chiefs, royal families, polygamic mar-
riages, councils, and regencies.” 2
The population was divided into soldiers and
laborers. The territory was parceled out to
chiefs, and the laborers were bound to the soil
and worked under rigorous inspection; part of
the products were reserved for their support,
and the rest went to the chiefs, the king, the
general government, and the army. The army
was under stern discipline and military service
was compulsory. Women did much of the agri-
cultural labor. Under Toussaint the adminis-
1 Aimes: African Institutions in America (reprinted from
Journal of American Folk Lore), p. 25.
* Brown: History of San Domingo, II, 158-159.
WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA 175
tration of this system was committed to Dessa-
lines, who carried it out with rigor; it was after-
ward followed by Christophe. The latter even
imported four thousand Negroes from Africa,
from whom he formed a national guard for pa-
trolling the land. These regulations brought back
for a time a large part of the former prosperity
of the island.
The severity with which Dessalines enforced
the laws soon began to turn many against him.
The educated mulattoes especially objected to
submission to the savage African mores. Des-
salines started to suppress their revolt, but was
killed in ambush in October, 1806.
Great Britain now began to intrigue for a pro-
tectorate over the island and the Spanish end of
the island threatened attack. These difficulties
were overcome, but at a cost of great internal
strain. After the death of Dessalines it seemed
that Hay ti was about to dissolve into a number of
petty subdivisions. At one time Christophe was
ruling as king in the north, Petion as president
at Port au Prince, Rigaud in the south, and a
semi-brigand, Goman, in the extreme southwest.
Very soon, however, the rivalry narrowed down
to Petion and Christophe. Petion was a man of
considerable ability and did much, not simply for
Hayti, but for South America. Already as early
as 1779, before the revolution in Hayti, the
Haytian Negroes had helped the United States.
The British had captured Savannah in 1778.
The French fleet appeared on the coast of Georgia
176
THE NEGRO
late that year and was ordered to recruit men in
Hayti. Eight hundred young freedmen, blacks
and mulattoes, offered to take part in the expe-
dition, and they fought valiantly in the siege and
covered themselves with glory. It was this legion
that made the charge on the British and saved
the retreating American army. Among the men
who fought there was Christophe.
When Simon Bolivar, Commodore Aury, and
many Venezuelan families were driven from their
country in 1815, they and their ships took tem-
porary refuge in Hayti. Notwithstanding the
embarrassed condition of the republic, Petion
received them and gave them four thousand rifles
with ammunition, provisions, and last and best
a printing press. He also settled some interna-
tional quarrels among members of the groups,
and Bolivar expressed himself afterward as being
“overwhelmed with magnanimous favors.” 1
Petion died in 1818 and was succeeded by
his friend Boyer. Christophe committed suicide
the following year and Boyer became not simply
ruler of western Hayti, but also, by arrangement
with the eastern end of the island, gained the
mastery there, where they were afraid of Spanish
aggression. Thus from 1822 to 1843 Boyer, a
man of much ability, ruled the whole of the
island and gained the recognition of Haytian
independence from France and other nations.
France, under Charles X, demanded an in-
demnity of thirty million dollars to reimburse the
1 See Leger: Hayti, Chap. XI.
WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA 177
planters for confiscated lands and property.
This Hayti tried to pay, but the annual install-
ment was a tremendous burden to the impover-
ished country. Further negotiations were en-
tered into. Finally in 1838 France recognized the
independence of the republic and the indemnity
was reduced to twelve million dollars. Even
this was a large burden for Hayti, and the pay-
ment of it for years crippled the island.
The United States and Great Britain in 1825-
26 recognized the independence of Hayti. A
concordat was arranged with the Pope for govern-
ing the church in Hayti, and finally in 1860
the church placed under the French hierarchy.
Thus Boyer did unusually well; but his neces-
sary concessions to France weakened his influ-
ence at home, and finally an earthquake, which
destroyed several towns in 1842, raised the super-
stititious of the populace against him. He re-
signed in 1843, leaving the treasury well filled;
but with his withdrawal the Spanish portion of
the island was lost to Hayti.
The subsequent history of Hayti since 1843
has been the struggle of a small divided country
to maintain political independence. The rich
resources of the country called for foreign capital,
but outside capital meant political influence
from abroad, which the little nation rightly
feared. Within, the old antagonism between
the freedman and the slave settled into a color
line between the mulatto and the black, which
for a time meant the difference between educated
178
THE NEGRO
liberalism and reactionary ignorance. This dif-
ference has largely disappeared, but some ves-
tiges of the color line remain. The result has
been reaction and savagery under Soulouque,
Dominique, and Nord Alexis, and decided
advance under presidents like Nissage-Saget,
Solomon, Legitime, and Hyppolite.
In political life Hayti is still in the sixteenth
century; but in economic life she has succeeded
in placing on their own little farms the happiest
and most contented peasantry in the world, after
raising them from a veritable hell of slavery. If
modern capitalistic greed can be restrained from
interference until the best elements of Hayti se-
cure permanent political leadership the triumph
of the revolution will be complete.
In other parts of the French-American domin-
ion the slaves achieved freedom also by insur-
rection. In Guadeloupe they helped the French
drive out the British, and thus gained emancipa-
tion. In Martinique it took three revolts and a
civil war to bring freedom.
The English slave empire in America centered
in the Bermudas, Barbadoes, Jamaica and the
lesser islands, and in the United States. Barba-
does developed a savage slave code, and the result
was attempted slave insurrections in 1674, 1692,
and 1702. These were not successful, but a rising
in 1816 destroyed much property under the
leadership of a mulatto, Washington Franklin,
and the repeal of bad laws and eventual enfran-
chisement of the colored people followed. One
WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA 179
Barbadian mulatto, Sir Conrad Reeves, has held
the position of chief justice in the island and was
knighted. A Negro insurrection in Dominica
under Farcel greatly exercised England in 1791
and 1794 and delayed slave trade abolition; in
1844 and 1847 further uprisings took place, and
these continued from 1853 to 1893.
The chief island domain of English slavery was
Jamaica. It was Oliver Cromwell who, in his
zeal for God and the slave trade, sent an expedi-
tion to seize Hayti. His fleet, driven off there,
took Jamaica in 1655. The English found the
mountains already infested with runaway slaves
known as “Maroons,” and more Negroes joined
them when the English arrived. In 1663 the
freedom of the Maroons was acknowledged, land
was given them, and their leader, Juan de Bolas,
was made a colonel in the militia. He was killed,
however, in the following year, and from 1664
to 1738 the three thousand or more black Maroons
fought the British Empire in guerrilla warfare.
Soldiers, Indians, and dogs were sent against
them, and finally in 1738 Captain Cudjo and
other chiefs made a formal treaty of peace with
Governor Trelawney. They were granted
twenty-five hundred acres and their freedom was
recognized.
The peace lasted until 1795, when they rebelled
again and gave the British a severe drubbing,
besides murdering planters. Bloodhounds again
were imported. The Maroons offered to sur-
render on the express condition that none of their
180
THE NEGRO
number should be deported from the island, as
the legislature wished. General Walpole hesitated,
but could get peace on no other terms and gave
his word. The Maroons surrendered their arms,
and immediately the whites seized six hundred
of the ringleaders and transported them to the
snows of Nova Scotia! The legislature then
voted a sword worth twenty-five hundred dollars
to General Walpole, which he indignantly refused
to accept. Eventually these exiled Maroons found
their way to Sierra Leone, West Africa, in time to
save that colony to the British crown.1
The pressing desire for peace with the Maroons
on the part of the white planters arose from the
new sugar culture introduced in 1673. A greatly
increased demand for slaves followed, and between
1700 and 1786 six hundred and ten thousand
slaves were imported; nevertheless, so severely
were they driven, that there were only three
hundred thousand Negroes in Jamaica in the
latter year.
Despite the Moravian missions and other
efforts late in the eighteenth century, unrest
among the Jamaica slaves and freedmen grew
and was increased by the anti-slavery agitation
in England and the revolt in Hayti. There was
an insurrection in 1796; and in 1831 again the
Negroes of northwest Jamaica, impatient because
of the slow progress of the emancipation, arose
in revolt and destroyed nearly three and a half
million dollars’ worth of property, well-nigh ruin-
1 Cf. Chapter V, p. 69.
WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA 181
ing the planters there. The next year two hun-
dred and fifty-five thousand slaves were set
free, for which the planters were paid nearly
thirty million dollars. There ensued a discour-
aging condition of industry. The white officials
sent out in these days were arbitrary and corrupt.
Little was done for the mass of the people and
there was outrageous over-taxation. Neverthe-
less the backwardness of the colony was attributed
to the Negro. Governor Eyre complained in
1865 that the young and strong were good for
nothing and were filling the jails; but a simul-
taneous report by a missionary told the truth
concerning the officials. This aroused the colored
people, and a mulatto, George William Gordon,
called a meeting. Other meetings were afterward
held, and finally the Negro peasantry began a
riot in 1861, in which eighteen people were killed,
only a few of whom were white.
The result was that Governor Eyre tried and
executed by court-martial 354 persons, and in
addition to this killed without trial 85, a total of
439. One thousand Negro homes were burned to
the ground and thousands of Negroes flogged or
mutilated. Children had their brains dashed out,
pregnant women were murdered, and Gordon
was tried by court-martial and hanged. In fact
the punishment was, as the royal commissioners
said, “reckless and positively barbarous.” 1
This high-handed act aroused England. Eyre
was not punished, but the island was made a
1 Johnston: Negro in the New World.
182
THE NEGRO
crown colony in 1866, and given representation
in the legislature in 1886.
In the island of St. Vincent, Indians first sought
to enslave the fugitive Negroes wrecked there,
but the Negroes took the Carib women and then
drove the Indian men away. These “black
Caribs ” fought with Indians, English, and others
for three quarters of a century, until the Indians
were exterminated. The British took possession
in 1763. The black Caribs resisted, and after
hard fighting signed a treaty in 1773, receiving
one-third of the island as their property. They
afterward helped the French against the British,
and were finally deported to the island of Ruatan,
off Honduras. In Trinidad and British Guiana
there have been mutinies and rioting of slaves and
a curious mingling of races.
Other parts of South America must be dis-
missed briefly, because of insufficient data.
Colombia and Venezuela, with perhaps eight
million people, have at least one-third of their
population of Negro and Indian descent. Here
Simon Bolivar with his Negro, mulatto, and
Indian forces began the war that liberated South
America. Central America has a smaller pro-
portion of Negroids, perhaps one hundred
thousand in all. Bolivia and Peru have small
amounts of Negro blood, while Argentine and
Uruguay have very little. The Negro population
in these lands is everywhere in process of rapid
amalgamation with whites and Indians.
CHAPTER XI
THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES
There were half a million slaves in the con-
fines of the United States when the Declaration
of Independence declared “that all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.” The land that thus magniloquently
heralded its advent into the family of nations
had supported the institution of human slavery
for one hundred and fifty-seven years and was
destined to cling to it eighty-seven years longer.
The greatest experiment in Negro slavery as a
modern industrial system was made on the main-
land of North America and in the confines of the
present United States. And this experiment was
on such a scale and so long-continued that it is
profitable for study and reflection. There were
in the United States in its dependencies, in 1910,
9,828,294 persons of acknowledged Negro descent,
not including the considerable infiltration of
Negro blood which is not acknowledged and often
not known. To-day the number of persons
called Negroes is probably about ten and a
quarter millions. These persons are almost en-
183
184
THE NEGRO
tirely descendants of African slaves, brought to
America in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth,
and nineteenth centuries.
The importation of Negroes to the mainland
of North America was small until the British got
the coveted privilege of the Asiento in 1713.
Before that Northern States like New York had
received some slaves from the Dutch, and New
England had early developed a trade by which she
imported a number of house servants. Ships
went out to the African coast with rum, sold the
rum, and brought the slaves to the West Indies;
there they exchanged the slaves for sugar and
molasses and brought the molasses back to New
England, to be made into rum for further ex-
ploits. After the Asiento treaty the Negro popu-
lation increased in the eighteenth century from
about 50,000 in 1710 to 220,000 in 1750 and to
462,000 in 1770. When the colonies became in-
dependent, the foreign slave trade was soon
made illegal; but illicit trade, annexation of
territory and natural increase enlarged the Negro
population from a little over a million at the
beginning of the nineteenth century to four and a
half millions at the outbreak of the Civil War
and to about ten and a quarter millions in 1914.
The present so-called Negro population of the
United States is:
1. A mixture of the various African popula-
tions, Bantu, Sudanese, west-coast Negroes,
some dwarfs, and some traces of Arab, Berber,
and Semitic blood.
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 185
2. A mixture of these strains with the blood
of white Americans through a system of con-
cubinage of colored women in slavery days,
together with some legal intermarriage.
The figures as to mulattoes 1 have been from
time to time officially acknowledged to be under-
statements. Probably one-third of the Negroes
of the United States have distinct traces of white
blood. This blending of the races has led to in-
teresting human types, but racial prejudice has
hitherto prevented any scientific study of the
matter. In general the Negro population in
the United States is brown in color, darkening to
almost black and shading off in the other direc-
tion to yellow and white, and is indistinguish-
able in some cases from the white population.
Much has been written of the black man in
America, but most of this has been from the point
of view of the whites, so that we know of the
1 The figures given by the census are as follows:
1850, mulattoes formed 11.2 per cent of the total Negro
population.
1860, mulattoes formed 13.2 per cent of the total Negro
population.
1870, mulattoes formed 12 per cent of the total Negro
population.
1890, mulattoes formed 15.2 per cent of the total Negro
population.
1910, mulattoes formed 20.9 per cent of the total Negro
population.
Or in actual numbers:
1850, 405,751 mulattoes.
1860, 588,352 mulattoes.
1870, 585,601 mulattoes.
1890, 1,132,060 mulattoes.
1910, 2,050,686 mulattoes.
186
THE NEGRO
effect of Negro slavery on the whites, the strife
among the whites for and against abolition, and
the consequent problem of the Negro so far as
the white population is concerned.
This chapter, however, is dealing with the
matter more from the point of view of the Negro
group itself, and seeking to show what slavery
meant to them, how they reacted against it,
what they did to secure their freedom, and what
they are doing with their partial freedom to-day.
The slaves landing from 1619 onward were
received by the colonies at first as laborers, on
the same plane as other laborers. For a long
time there was in law no distinction between
the indented white servant from England and
the black servant from Africa, except in the
term of their service. Even here the distinction
was not always observed, some of the whites
being kept beyond term of their service and
Negroes now and then securing their freedom.
Gradually the planters realized the advantage
of laborers held for life, but they were met by
certain moral difficulties. The opposition to
slavery had from the first been largely stilled
when it was stated that this was a method of
converting the heathen to Christianity. The
corollary was that when a slave was converted
he became free. Up to 1660 or thereabouts it
seemed accepted in most colonies and in the
English West Indies that baptism into a Chris-
tian church would free a Negro slave. Masters,
therefore, were reluctant in the seventeenth cen-
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 187
tury to have their slaves receive Christian instruc-
tion. Massachusetts first apparently legislated
on this matter by enacting in 1641 that slavery
should be confined to captives in just wars “and
such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are
sold to us,”1 meaning by “strangers” apparently
heathen, but saying nothing as to the effect of
conversion. Connecticut adopted similar legis-
lation in 1650, and Virginia declared in 1661
that Negroes “are incapable of making satis-
faction ” for time lost in running away by
lengthening their time of services, thus implying
that they were slaves for life. Maryland de-
clared in 1663 that Negro slaves should serve du-
rante vita, but it was not until 1667 that Virginia
finally plucked up courage to attack the issue
squarely and declared by law: “Baptism doth
not alter the condition of the person as to his
bondage or freedom, in order that diverse mas-
ters freed from this doubt may more carefully
endeavor the propagation of Christianity.” 2
The transplanting of the Negro from his
African clan life to the West Indian plantation
was a social revolution. Marriage became geo-
graphical and transient, while women and girls
were without protection.
The private home as a self-protective, inde-
pendent unit did not exist. That powerful insti-
tution, the polygamous African home, was al-
1 Cf. “The Spanish Jurist Solorzaris,” quoted in Helps:
Spanish Conquest, IV, 381.
* Hurd: Law of Freedom and Bondage.
188
THE NEGRO
most completely destroyed, and in its place in
America arose sexual promiscuity, a weak com-
munity life, with common dwelling, meals, and
child nurseries. The internal slave trade tended
further to weaken natural ties. A small number
of favored house servants and artisans were
raised above this — had their private homes, came
in contact with the culture of the master class,
and assimilated much of American civilization.
This was, however, exceptional; broadly speak-
ing, the greatest social effect of American slavery
was to substitute for the polygamous Negro home
a new polygamy less guarded, less effective, and
less civilized.
At first sight it would seem that slavery com-
pletely destroyed every vestige of spontaneous
movement among the Negroes. This is not
strictly true. The vast power of the priest in the
African state is well known; his realm alone —
the province of religion and medicine — remained
largely unaffected by the plantation system.
The Negro priest, therefore, early became an
important figure on the plantation and found his
function as the interpreter of the supernatural,
the comforter of the sorrowing, and as the one who
expressed, rudely but picturesquely, the longing
and disappointment and resentment of a stolen
people. From such beginnings arose and spread
with marvelous rapidity the Negro church, the
first distinctively Negro American social insti-
tution. It was not at first by any means a Chris-
tian church, but a mere adaptation of those rites
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 189
of fetish which in America is termed obe wor-
ship, or “ voodooism.” 1 Association and mis-
sionary effort soon gave these rites a veneer of
Christianity and gradually, after two centuries,
the church became Christian, with a simple
Calvinistic creed, but with many of the old cus-
toms still clinging to the services. It is this
historic fact, that the Negro church of to-day bases
itself upon the sole surviving social institution
of the African fatherland, that accounts for its
extraordinary growth and vitality.
The slave codes at first were really labor codes
based on an attempt to reestablish in America
the waning feudalism of Europe. The laborers
were mainly black and were held for life. Above
them came the artisans, free whites with a few
blacks, and above them the master class. The
feudalism called for the plantation system, and
the plantation system as developed in America,
and particularly in Virginia, was at first a feudal
domain. On these plantations the master was
practically supreme. The slave codes in early
days were but moderately harsh, allowing punish-
ment by the master, but restraining him in ex-
1 “Obi (Obeah, Obiah, or Obia) is the adjective; Obe or
Obi, the noun. It is of African origin, probably connected
with Egyptian Ob, Aub, or Obron, meaning ‘serpent.’
Moses forbids Israelites ever to consult the demon Ob, i.e.,
‘Charmer, Wizard.’ The Witch of Endor is called Oub or
Ob. Oubaois is the name of the Baselisk or Royal Serpent,
emblem of the Sun, and, according to Horus Appollo, ‘the
Ancient Deity of Africa.’” — Edwards: West Indies, ed. 1819,
II, 106-119. Cf. Johnston: Negro in the New World, pp. 65—
66; also Atlanta University Publications, No. 8, pp. 5-6.
190
THE NEGRO
treme cases and providing for care of the slaves
and of the aged. With the power, however, solely
in the hands of the master class, and with the
master supreme on his own plantation, his power
over the slave was practically what he wished it
to be. In some cases the cruelty was as great
as on the worst West Indian plantations. In
other cases the rule was mild and paternal.
Up through this American feudalism the Negro
began to rise. He learned in the eighteenth
century the English language, he began to be
identified with the Christian church, he mingled
his blood to a considerable extent with the master
class. The house servants particularly were
favored, in some cases receiving education, and
the number of free Negroes gradually increased.
Present-day students are often puzzled at the
apparent contradictions of Southern slavery.
One hears, on the one hand, of the staid and gentle
patriarchy, the wide and sleepy plantations with
lord and retainers, ease and happiness; on the
other hand one hears of barbarous cruelty and
unbridled power and wide oppression of men.
Which is the true picture? The answer is simple:
both are true. They are not opposite sides of the
same shield; they are different shields. They are
pictures, on the one hand, of house service in
the great country seats and in the towns, and
on the other hand of the field laborers who raised
the great tobacco, rice, and cotton crops. We
have thus not only carelessly mixed pictures of
what were really different kinds of slavery, but
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 191
of that which represented different degrees in
the development of the economic system. House
sendee was the older feudal idea of personal re-
tainership, developed in Virginia and Carolina
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
It had all the advantages and disadvantages of
such a system; the advantage of the strong per-
sonal tie and the disadvantage of unyielding
caste distinctions, with the resultant immorali-
ties. At its worst, however, it was a matter
primarily of human relationships.
Out of this older type of slavery in the northern
South there developed, during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, in the southern South the
type of slavery which corresponds to the modem
factory system in its worst conceivable form. It
represented production of a staple product on a
large scale; between the owner and laborer were
interposed the overseer and the drivers. The
slaves were whipped and driven to a mechanical
task system. Wide territory was needed, so that
at last absentee landlordship was common. It
was this latter type of slavery that marked the
cotton kingdom, and the extension of the area of
this system southward and westward marked
the aggressive world-conquering visions of the
slave barons. On the other hand it was the
milder and far different Virginia house service
and the personal retainership of town life in which
most white children grew up; it was this that im-
pressed their imaginations and which they have
so vividly portrayed. The Negroes, however,
192
THE NEGRO
knew the other side, for it was under the harsher,
heartless driving of the fields that fully nine-
tenths of them lived.
There early began to be some internal develop-
ment and growth of self-consciousness among
the Negroes : for instance, in New England towns
Negro “governors” were elected. This was
partly an African custom transplanted and partly
an endeavor to put the regulation of the slaves
into their own hands. Negroes voted in those
days: for instance, in North Carolina until
1835 the Constitution extended the franchise to
every freeman, and when Negroes were dis-
franchised in 1835, several hundred colored men
were deprived of the vote. In fact, as Albert
BushnellHartsays, “ In the colonies freed Negroes,
like freed indentured white servants, acquired
property, founded families, and came into the
political community if they had the energy, thrift,
and fortune to get the necessary property.” 1
The humanitarian movement of the eighteenth
century was active toward Negroes, because of
the part which they played in the Revolutionary
War. Negro regiments and companies were
raised in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and a
large number of Negroes were members of the
continental armies elsewhere. Individual Ne-
groes distinguished themselves. It is estimated
that five thousand Negroes fought in the American
armies.
The mass of the Americans considered at the
1 Boston Transcript, March 24, 1906.
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 193
time of the adoption of the Constitution that
Negro slavery was doomed. There soon came a
series of laws emancipating slaves in the North:
Vermont began in 1779, followed by judicial
decision in Massachusetts in 1780 and gradual
emancipation in Pennsylvania beginning the
same year; emancipation was accomplished in
New Hampshire in 1783, and in Connecticut and
Rhode Island in 1784. The momentous exclu-
sion of slavery in the Northwest Territory took
place in 1787, and gradual emancipation began
in New York and New Jersey in 1799 and 1804.
Beneficial and insurance societies began to
appear among colored people. Nearly every
town of any size in Virginia in the early eight-
eenth century had Negro organizations for car-
ing for the sick and burying the dead. As the
number of free Negroes increased, particularly
in the North, these financial societies began to
be openly formed. One of the earliest was the
Free African Society of Philadelphia. This even-
tually became the present African Methodist
Church, which has to-day half a million mem-
bers and over eleven million dollars’ worth of
property.
Negroes began to be received into the white
church bodies in separate congregations, and
before 1807 there is the record of the formation
of eight such Negro churches. This brought forth
leaders who were usually preachers in these
churches. Richard Allen, the founder of the
African Methodist Church, was one; Lot Carey,
194
THE NEGRO
one of the founders of Liberia, was another. In
the South there was John Chavis, who passed
through a regular course of studies at what is
now Washington and Lee University. He started
a school for young white men in North Carolina
and had among his pupils a United States senator,
sons of a chief justice of North Carolina, a gover-
nor of the state, and many others. He was a
full-blooded Negro, but a Southern writer says
that “all accounts agree that John Chavis was a
gentleman. He was received socially among the
best whites and asked to table.” 1
In the war of 1812 thirty -three hundred Negroes
helped Jackson win the battle of New Orleans,
and numbers fought in New York State and in
the navy under Perry, Channing, and others.
Phyllis Wheatley, a Negro girl, wrote poetry,
and the mulatto, Benjamin Banneker, published
one of the first American series of almanacs.
In fine, it seemed in the early years of the
nineteenth century that slavery in the United
States would gradually disappear and that the
Negro would have, in time, a man’s chance. A
change came, however, between 1820 and 1830,
and it is directly traceable to the industrial
revolution of the nineteenth century.
Between 1738 and 1830 there had come a re-
markable series of inventions which revolutionized
the methods of making cloth. This series in-
cluded the invention of the fly shuttle, the card-
ing machine, the steam engine, and the power
1 Bassett: North Carolina, pp. 73-76.
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 195
loom. The world began to look about for a
cheaper and larger supply of fiber for weaving.
It was found in the cotton plant, and the southern
United States was especially adapted to its cul-
ture. The invention of the cotton gin removed
the last difficulties. The South now had a crop
which could be attended to by unskilled labor
and for which there was practically unlimited
demand. There was land, and rich land, in
plenty. The result was that the cotton crop in
the United States increased from 8,000 bales in
1790 to 650,000 bales in 1820, to 2,500,000 bales
in 1850, and to 4,000,000 bales in 1860.
In this growth one sees the economic founda-
tion of the new slavery in the United States,
which rose in the second decade of the nine-
teenth century. Manifestly the fatal procras-
tination in dealing with slavery in the eighteenth
century received in the nineteenth century its
terrible reward. The change in the attitude
toward slavery was manifest in various ways.
The South no longer excused slavery, but began
to defend it as an economic system. The en-
forcement of the slave trade laws became no-
toriously lax and there was a tendency to make
slave codes harsher.
This led to retaliation on the part of the
Negroes. There had not been in the United
States before this many attempts at insurrection.
The slaves were distributed over a wide territory,
and before they became intelligent enough to
cooperate the chance of emancipation was
196
THE NEGRO
held before them. Several small insurrections
are alluded to in South Carolina early in the
eighteenth century, and one by Cato at Stono in
1740 caused widespread alarm. The Negro
plot in New York in 1712 put the city into
hysterics. There was no further plotting on
any scale until the Haytian revolt, when Gabriel
in Virginia made an abortive attempt. In
1822 a free Negro, Denmark Vesey, in South
Carolina, failed in a well-laid plot, and ten years
after that, in 1831, Nat Turner led his insurrec-
tion in Virginia and killed fifty-one persons.
The result of this insurrection was to crystallize
tendencies toward harshness which the economic
revolution was making advisable.
A wave of legislation passed over the South,
prohibiting the slaves from learning to read and
write, forbidding Negroes to preach, and inter-
fering with Negro religious meetings. Virginia
declared in 1831 that neither slaves nor free
Negroes might preach, nor could they attend
religious service at night without permission.
In North Carolina slaves and free Negroes were
forbidden to preach, exhort, or teach “in any
prayer meeting or other association for worship
where slaves of different families are collected
together ” on penalty of not more than thirty -nine
lashes. Maryland and Georgia and other states
had similar laws.
The real effective revolt of the Negro against
slavery was not, however, by fighting, but by
running away, usually to the North, which had
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 197
been recently freed from slavery. From the
beginning of the nineteenth century slaves began
to escape in considerable numbers. Four geo-
graphical paths were chiefly followed: one, lead-
ing southward, was the line of swamps along the
coast from Norfolk, Virginia, to the northern
border of Florida. This gave rise to the Negro
element among the Indians in Florida and led
to the two Seminole wars of 1817 and 1835.
These wars were really slave raids to make the
Indians give up the Negro and half-breed slaves
domiciled among them. The wars cost the United
States ten million dollars and two thousand lives.
The great Appalachian range, with its abut-
ting mountains, was the safest path northward.
Through Tennessee and Kentucky and the heart
of the Cumberland Mountains, using the lime-
stone caverns, was the third route, and the valley
of the Mississippi was the western tunnel.
These runaways and the freedmen of the
North soon began to form a group of people who
sought to consider the problem of slavery and
the destiny of the Negro in America. They
passed through many psychological changes of
attitude in the years from 1700 to 1850. At
first, in the early part of the eighteenth century,
there was but one thought: revolt and revenge.
The development of the latter half of the century
brought an attitude of hope and adjustment
and emphasized the differences between the slave
and the free Negro. The first part of the nine-
teenth century brought two movements: among
198
THE NEGRO
the free Negroes an effort at self-development
and protection through organization; among
slaves and recent fugitives a distinct reversion
to the older idea of revolt.
As the new industrial slavery, following the rise
of the cotton kingdom, began to press harder, a
period of storm and stress ensued in the black
world, and in 1829 came the first full- voiced,
almost hysterical protest of a Negro against
slavery and the color line in David Walker’s
Appeal, which aroused Southern legislatures to
action.
The decade 1830—40 was a severe period of
trial. Not only were the chains of slavery tighter
in the South, but in the North the free Negro
was beginning to feel the ostracism and compe-
tition of white workingmen, native and foreign.
In Philadelphia, between 1829 and 1849, six
mobs of hoodlums and foreigners murdered and
maltreated Negroes. In the Middle West harsh
black laws which had been enacted in earlier
days were hauled from their hiding places and
put into effect. No Negro was allowed to settle
in Ohio unless he gave bond within twenty days
to the amount of five thousand dollars to guaran-
tee his good behavior and support. Harboring
or concealing fugitives was heavily fined, and
no Negro could give evidence in any case where
a white man was party. These laws began to
be enforced in 1829 and for three days riots went
on in Cincinnati and Negroes were shot and
killed. Aroused, the Negroes sent a deputation
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 199
to Canada where they were offered asylum.
Fully two thousand migrated from Ohio. Later
large numbers from other parts of the United
States joined them.
In 1830-31 the first Negro conventions were
called in Philadelphia to consider the desperate
condition of the Negro population, and in 1833
the convention met again and local societies were
formed. The first Negro paper was issued in
New York in 1827, while later emancipation in
the British West Indies brought some cheer
in the darkness.
A system of separate Negro schools was es-
tablished and the little band of abolitionists led
by Garrison and others appeared. In spite of
all the untoward circumstances, therefore, the
internal development of the free Negro in the
North went on. The Negro population in-
creased twenty-three per cent between 1830 and
1840; Philadelphia had, in 1838, one hundred
small beneficial societies, while Ohio Negroes had
ten thousand acres of land. The slave mutiny
on the Creole, the establishment of the Negro
Odd Fellows, and the growth of the Negro
churches all indicated advancement.
Between 1830 and 1850 the concerted cooper-
ation to assist fugitives came to be known as the
Underground Railroad. It was an organization
not simply of white philanthropists, but the
cooperation of Negroes in the most difficult
part of the work made it possible. Hundreds of
Negroes visited the slave states to entice the
200
THE NEGRO
slaves away, and the list of Underground Rail-
road operators given by Siebert contains one
hundred and twenty -eight names of Negroes.
In Canada and in the northern United States
there was a secret society, known as the League
of Freedom, which especially worked to help
slaves run away. Harriet Tubman was one of
the most energetic of these slave conductors
and brought away several thousand slaves.
William Lambert, a colored man, was reputed
between 1829 and 1862 to have aided in the
escape of thirty thousand.
The decade 1840-50 was a period of hope
and uplift for the Negro group, with clear evi-
dences of distinct self-assertion and advance.
A few well-trained lawyers and physicians ap-
peared, and colored men took their place among
the abolition orators. The catering business in
Philadelphia and other cities fell largely into
their hands, and some small merchants arose
here and there. Above all, Frederick Douglass
made his first speech in 1841 and thereafter
became one of the most prominent figures in
the abolition crusade. A new series of national
conventions began to assemble late in the forties,
and the delegates were drawn from the artisans
and higher servants, showing a great increase
of efficiency in the rank and file of the free
Negroes.
By 1850 the Negroes had increased to three
and a half million. Those in Canada were being
organized in settlements and were accumulating
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 201
property. The escape of fugitive slaves was
systematized and some of the most representa-
tive conventions met. One particularly, in 1854,
grappled frankly with the problem of emigration.
It looked as though it was going to be impossible
for Negroes to remain in the United States and
be free. As early as 1788 a Negro union of New-
port, Rhode Island, had proposed a general
exodus to Africa. John and Paul Cuffe, after
petitioning for the right to vote in 1780, started
in 1815 for Africa, organizing an expedition at
their own expense which cost four thousand
dollars. Lot Carey organized the African Mis-
sion Society in 1813, and the first Negro college
graduate went to Liberia in 1829 and became
superintendent of public schools. The Coloni-
zation Society encouraged this migration, and the
Negroes themselves had organized the Canadian
exodus.
The Rochester Negro convention in 1853 pro-
nounced against migration, but nevertheless
emissaries were sent in various directions to
see what inducements could be offered. One
went to the Niger valley, one to Central America,
and one to Hayti. The Haytian trip was suc-
cessful and about two thousand black emigrants
eventually settled in Hayti.
Delaney, who went to Africa, concluded a
treaty with eight kings offering inducements to
Negroes, but nothing came of it. In 1853 Negroes
like Purvis and Barbadoes helped in the forma-
tion of the American Anti-slavery society, and
202
THE NEGRO
for a while colored men cooperated with John
Brown and probably would have given him con-
siderable help if they had thoroughly known his
plans. As it was, six or seven of his twenty-two
followers were Negroes.
Meantime the slave power was impelled by
the high price of slaves and the exhaustion of
cotton land to make increased demands. Slavery
was forced north of Mason and Dixon’s line in
1820; a new slave empire with thousands of
slaves was annexed in 1850, and a fugitive slave
law was passed which endangered the liberty of
every free Negro; finally a determined attempt
was made to force slavery into the Northwest
in competition with free white labor, and less
effective but powerful movements arose to annex
more slave territory to the south and to reopen
the African slave trade.
It looked like a triumphal march for the slave
barons, but each step cost more than the last.
Missouri gave rise to the early abolitionist move-
ment. Mexico and the fugitive slave law aroused
deep opposition in the North, and Kansas de-
veloped an attack upon the free labor system,
not simply of the North, but of the civilized
world. The result was war; but the war was not
against slavery. It was fought to protect free
white laborers against the competition of slaves,
and it was thought possible to do this by segregat-
ing slavery.
The first thing that vexed the Northern armies
on Southern soil during the war was the question
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 203
of the disposition of the fugitive slaves, who
immediately began to arrive in increasing num-
bers. Butler confiscated them, Fremont freed
them, and Halleck caught and returned them;
but their numbers swelled to such large propor-
tions that the mere economic problem of their
presence overshadowed everything else, especially
after the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln
was glad to have them come after once he realized
their strength to the Confederacy.
The Emancipation Proclamation was forced,
not simply by the necessity of paralyzing indus-
try in the South, but also by the necessity of
employing Negro soldiers. During the first two
years of the war no one wanted Negro soldiers.
It was declared to be a “white man’s war.”
General Hunter tried to raise a regiment in South
Carolina, but the War Department disavowed
the act. In Louisiana the Negroes were anxious
to enlist, but were held off. In the meantime
the war did not go as well as the North had hoped,
and on the twenty-sixth of January, 1863, the
Secretary of War authorized the Governor of
Massachusetts to raise two regiments of Negro
troops. Frederick Douglass and others began
the work with enthusiasm, and in the end one
hundred and eighty-seven thousand Negroes en-
listed in the Northern armies, of whom seventy
thousand were killed and wounded. The conduct
of these troops wTas exemplary. They were in-
dispensable in camp duties and brave on the
field, where they fought in two hundred and
204
THE NEGRO
thirteen battles. General Banks wrote, “Their
conduct was heroic. No troops could be more
determined or more daring.” 1
The assault on Fort Wagner, led by a thousand
black soldiers under the white Colonel Shaw,
is one of the greatest deeds of desperate bravery
on record. On the other hand the treatment of
Negro soldiers when captured by the Confed-
erates was barbarous. At Fort Pillow, after
the surrender of the federal troops, the colored
regiment was indiscriminately butchered and
some of them were buried alive.
Abraham Lincoln said, “The slightest knowl-
edge of arithmetic will prove to any man that the
rebel armies cannot be destroyed with Demo-
cratic strategy. It would sacrifice all the -white
men of the North to do it. There are now in
the service of the United States near two hun-
dred thousand able-bodied colored men, most of
them under arms, defending and acquiring Union
territory. . . . Abandon all the posts now gar-
risoned by black men; take two hundred thou-
sand men from our side and put them in the
battlefield or cornfield against us, and we would
be compelled to abandon the war in three weeks.” 2
Emancipation thus came as a war measure to
break the power of the Confederacy, preserve
the Union, and gain the sympathy of the civilized
world.
However, two hundred and forty-four years
1 Cf. Wilson: The Black Phalanx.
3 Wilson: The Black Phalanx, p. 108.
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 205
of slavery could not be stopped by edict. There
were legal difficulties, the whole slow problem of
economic readjustment, and the subtle and far-
reaching questions of future race relations.
The peculiar circumstances of emancipation
forced the legal and political difficulties to the
front, and these were so striking that they have
since obscured the others in the eyes of students.
Quite unexpectedly and without forethought the
nation had emancipated four million slaves.
Once the deed was done, the majority of the nation
was glad and recognized that this was, after all,
the only result of a fearful four years’ war which
in any degree justified it. But how was the result
to be secured for all time? There were three
possibilities: (1) to declare the slave free and
leave him at the mercy of his former masters;
(2) to establish a careful government guardian-
ship designed to guide the slave from legal to
real economic freedom; (3) to give the Negro
the political power to guard himself as well as
he could during this development. It is very
easy to forget that the United States government
tried each one of these in succession and was
literally forced to adopt the third, because the
first had utterly failed and the second was
thought too “paternal” and especially too
costly. To leave the Negroes helpless after a
paper edict of emancipation was manifestly im-
possible. It would have meant that the war had
been fought in vain.
Carl Schurz, who traversed the South just
206
THE NEGRO
after the war, said, “A veritable reign of terror
prevailed in many parts of the South. The Negro
found scant justice in the local courts against the
white man. He could look for protection only
to the military forces of the United States still
garrisoning the states lately in rebellion and to
the Freedmen’s Bureau.” 1 This Freedmen’s
Bureau was proposed by Charles Sumner. If
it had been presented to-day instead of fifty years
ago, it would have been regarded as a proposal
far less revolutionary than the state insurance
of England and Germany. A half century ago,
however, and in a country which gave the
laisser faire economics their extremest trial,
the Freedmen’s Bureau struck the whole nation
as unthinkable, save as a very temporary ex-
pedient and to relieve the more pointed forms of
distress following war. Yet the proposals of the
Bureau were both simple and sensible:
1. To oversee the making and enforcement
of wage contracts for freedmen.
2. To appear in the courts as the freedmen’s
best friend.
3. To furnish the freedmen with a minimum
of land and of capital.
4. To establish schools.
5. To furnish such institutions of relief as
hospitals, outdoor relief stations, etc.
How a sensible people could expect really to
conduct a slave into freedom with less than this
it is hard to see. Even with such tutelage ex-
1 American Historical Review, Vol. XV.
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 207
tending over a period of two or three decades,
the ultimate end had to be enfranchisement and
political and social freedom for those freedmen
who attained a certain set standard. Otherwise
the whole training had neither object nor guar-
antee. Precisely on this account the former
masters opposed the Freedmen’s Bureau with
all their influence. They did not want the Negro
trained or really freed, and they criticized mer-
cilessly the many mistakes of the new Bureau.
The North at first thought to pay for the main
cost of the Freedmen’s Bureau by confiscating
the property of former slave owners; but finding
this not in accordance with law, they realized
that they were embarking on an enterprise which
bade fair to add many millions to the already
staggering cost of the war. When, therefore,
they saw that the abolition of slavery could not
be left to the white South and could not be done
by the North without time and money, they de-
termined to put the responsibility on the Negro
himself. This was without a doubt a tremendous
experiment, but with all its manifest mistakes it
succeeded to an astonishing degree. It made the
immediate reestablishment of the old slavery
impossible, and it was probably the only quick
method of doing this. It gave the freedmen’s
sons a chance to begin their education. It
diverted the energy of the white South slavery
to the recovery of political power, and in this
interval, small as it was, the Negro took his
first steps toward economic freedom.
208
THE NEGRO
The difficulties that stared reconstruction
politicians in the face were these: (1) They must
act quickly. (2) Emancipation had increased
the political power of the South by one-sixth.
Could this increased political power be put in
the hands of those who, in defense of slavery,
had disrupted the Union? (3) How was the
abolition of slavery to be made effective? (4)
What was to be the political position of the
freedmen?
The Freedmen’s Bureau in its short life ac-
complished a great task. Carl Schurz, in 1865,
felt warranted in saying that “not half of the
labor that has been done in the South this year,
or will be done there next year, would have been
or would be done but for the exertions of the
Freedmen’s Bureau. ... No other agency except
one placed there by the national government
could have wielded that moral power whose in-
terposition was so necessary to prevent Southern
society from falling at once into the chaos of a
general collision between its different elements.” 1
Notwithstanding this the Bureau was temporary,
was regarded as a makeshift, and soon aban-
doned.
Meantime partial Negro suffrage seemed not
only just, but almost inevitable. Lincoln, in
1864, “cautiously” suggested to Louisiana’s
private consideration “whether some of the
colored people may not be let in as, for instance,
the very intelligent, and especially those who
1 Report to President Johnson.
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 209
fought gallantly in our ranks. They would prob-
ably help in some trying time to come, to keep
the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom.”
Indeed, the “family of freedom” in Louisiana
being somewhat small just then, who else was
to be intrusted with the “jewel”? Later and
for different reasons Johnson, in 1865, wrote to
Mississippi, “If you could extend the elective
franchise to all persons of color who can read the
Constitution of the United States in English and
write their name, and to all persons of color who
own real estate valued at not less than two hun-
dred and fifty dollars, and pay taxes thereon,
you would completely disarm the adversary and
set an example the other states will follow. This
you can do with perfect safety, and you thus
place the Southern States, in reference to free
persons of color, upon the same basis with the
free states. I hope and trust your convention
will do this.”
The Negroes themselves began to ask for
the suffrage. The Georgia convention in
Augusta (1866) advocated “a proposition to
give those who could write and read well and
possessed a certain property qualification the
right of suffrage.” The reply of the South to
these suggestions was decisive. In Tennessee
alone was any action attempted that even sug-
gested possible Negro suffrage in the future, and
that failed. In all other states the “Black
Codes” adopted were certainly not reassuring
to the friends of freedom. To be sure, it was not
210
THE NEGRO
a time to look for calm, cool, thoughtful action
on the part of the white South. Their economic
condition was pitiable, their fear of Negro free-
dom genuine. Yet it was reasonable to expect
from them something less than repression and
utter reaction toward slavery. To some extent
this expectation was fulfilled. The abolition of
slavery was recognized on the statute book, and
the civil rights of owning property and appearing
as a witness in cases in which he was a party
were generally granted the Negro; yet with these
in many cases went harsh and unbearable regu-
lations which largely neutralized the conces-
sions and certainly gave ground for an assumption
that, once free, the South would virtually re-
enslave the Negro. The colored people themselves
naturally feared this, protesting, as in Missis-
sippi, “against the reactionary policy prevailing
and expressing the fear that the legislature will
pass such proscriptive laws as will drive the
freedmen from the state, or practically reeenslave
them.”
The codes spoke for themselves. As Burgess
says, “Almost every act, word, or gesture of the
Negro, not consonant with good taste and good
manners as well as good morals, was made a
crime or misdemeanor for which he could first
be fined by the magistrates and then be con-
signed to a condition of almost slavery for an
indefinite time, if he could not pay the bill.” 1
All things considered, it seems probable that,
1 Reconstruction and the Constitution.
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 211
if the South had been permitted to have its
way in 1865, the harshness of Negro slavery
would have been mitigated so as to make slave
trading difficult, and so as to make it possible
for a Negro to hold property and appear in some
cases in court ; but that in most other respects
the blacks would have remained in slavery.
What could prevent this? A Freedmen’s
Bureau established for ten, twenty, or forty
years, with a careful distribution of land and
capital and a system of education for the chil-
dren, might have prevented such an extension
of slavery. But the country would not listen to
such a comprehensive plan. A restricted grant
of the suffrage voluntarily made by the states
would have been a reassuring proof of a desire
to treat the freedmen fairly and would have
balanced in part, at least, the increased politi-
cal power of the South. There was no such dis-
position evident.
In Louisiana, for instance, under the proposed
reconstruction “not one Negro was allowed to
vote, though at that very time the wealthy
intelligent free colored people of the state paid
taxes on property assessed at fifteen million
dollars and many of them were well known for
their patriotic zeal and love for the Union.” 1
Thus the arguments for universal Negro suf-
frage from the start were strong and are still
strong, and no one would question their strength
were it not for the assumption that the experi-
1 Brewster: Sketches, etc.
212
THE NEGRO
ment failed. Frederick Douglass said to Presi-
dent Johnson, “Your noble and humane pred-
ecessor placed in our hands the sword to assist
in saving the nation, and we do hope that you,
his able successor, will favorably regard the plac-
ing in our hands the ballot with which to save
ourselves.” 1
Carl Schurz wrote, “It is idle to say that it
will be time to speak of Negro suffrage when the
whole colored race will be educated, for the
ballot may be necessary to him to secure his
education.” 2
The granting of full Negro suffrage meant one
of two alternatives to the South: (1) The uplift
of the Negro for sheer self-preservation. This is
what Schurz and the saner North expected.
As one Southern school superintendent said,
“The elevation of this class is a matter of prime
importance, since a ballot in the hands of a black
citizen is quite as potent as in the hands of a
white one.” Or (2) Negro suffrage meant a
determined concentration of Southern effort by
actual force to deprive the Negro of the ballot or
nullify its use. This last is what really happened.
But even in this case, so much energy was taken
in keeping the Negro from voting that the plan
for keeping him in virtual slavery and denying
him education partially failed. It took ten years
to nullify Negro suffrage in part and twenty years
to escape the fear of federal intervention. In these
1 McPherson: Reconstruction, p. 52.
5 Report to the President, 1865.
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 21S
twenty years a vast number of Negroes had arisen
so far as to escape slavery forever. Debt peonage
could be fastened on part of the rural South and
was; but even here the new Negro landholder
appeared. Thus despite everything the Fifteenth
Amendment, and that alone, struck the death
knell of slavery.
The steps toward the Fifteenth Amendment
were taken slowly. First Negroes were allowed
to take part in reconstructing the state govern-
ments. This was inevitable if loyal governments
were to be obtained. Next the restored state
governments were directed to enfranchise all citi-
zens, black or white, or have their representation
in Congress cut down proportionately. Finally
the United States said the last word of simple jus-
tice: the states may regulate the suffrage, but no
state may deprive a person of the right to vote
simply because he is a Negro or has been a slave.
For such reasons the Negro was enfranchised.
What was the result? No language has been
spared to describe these results as the worst
imaginable. This is not true. There were bad
results, and bad results arising from Negro
suffrage; but those results were not so bad as
usually painted, nor was Negro suffrage the prime
cause of many of them. Let us not forget that
the white South believed it to be of vital in-
terest to its welfare that the experiment of Negro
suffrage should fail ignominiously and that al-
most to a man the whites were willing to insure
this failure either by active force or passive ac-
214
THE NEGRO
quiescence; that besides this there were, as might
be expected, men, black and white, Northern and
Southern, only too eager to take advantage of
such a situation for feathering their own nests.
Much evil must result in such case; but to charge
the evil to Negro suffrage is unfair. It may be
charged to anger, poverty, venality, and igno-
rance, but the anger and poverty were the almost
inevitable aftermath of war; the venality was
much greater among whites than Negroes both
North and South, and while ignorance was the
curse of Negroes, the fault was not theirs and
they took the initiative to correct it.
The chief charges against the Negro govern-
ments are extravagance, theft, and incompetency
of officials. There is no serious charge that these
governments threatened civilization or the foun-
dations of social order. The charge is that they
threatened property and that they were inefficient.
These charges are in part undoubtedly true, but
they are often exaggerated. The South had been
terribly impoverished and saddled with new
social burdens. In other words, states with
smaller resources were asked not only to do a
work of restoration, but a larger social work.
The property holders were aghast. They not
only demurred, but, predicting ruin and revolu-
tion, they appealed to secret societies, to intimi-
dation, force, and murder. They refused to believe
that these novices in government and their
friends were aught but scamps and fools. Under
the circumstances occurring directly after the
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 215
war, the wisest statesman would have been
compelled to resort to increased taxation and
would have, in turn, been execrated as extrava-
gant, dishonest, and incompetent. It is easy,
therefore, to see what flaming and incredible
stories of Reconstruction governments could
gain wide currency and belief. In fact the ex-
travagance, although great, was not universal,
and much of it was due to the extravagant spirit
pervading the whole country in a day of in-
flated currency and speculation.
That the Negroes, led by the astute thieves,
became at first tools and received some small
share of the spoils is true. But two considerations
must be added: much of the legislation which
resulted in fraud was represented to the Negroes
as good legislation, and thus their votes were
secured by deliberate misrepresentation. Take,
for instance, the land frauds of South Carolina.
A wise Negro leader of that state, advocating
the state purchase of farm lands, said, “One of
the greatest of slavery bulwarks was the infernal
plantation system, one man owning his thousand,
another his twenty, another fifty thousand acres
of land. This is the only way by which we will
break up chat system, and I maintain that our
freedom will be of no effect if we allow it to
continue. What is the main cause of the prosperity
of the North? It is because every man has his
own farm and is free and independent. Let the
lands of the South be similarly divided.” 1
1 American Historical Review, Vol. XV, No. 4.
216
THE NEGRO
From such arguments the Negroes were induced
to aid a scheme to buy land and distribute it.
Yet a large part of eight hundred thousand dollars
appropriated was wasted and went to the white
landholders’ pockets.
The most inexcusable cheating of the Negroes
took place through the Freedmen’s Bank. This
bank was incorporated by Congress in 1865 and
had in its list of incorporators some of the greatest
names in America including Peter Cooper, William
Cullen Bryan and John Jay. Yet the bank was
allowed to fail in 1874 owing the freedmen their
first savings of over three millions of dollars.
They have never been reimbursed.
Many Negroes were undoubtedly venal, but
more were ignorant and deceived. The question
is: Did they show any signs of a disposition to
learn to better things? The theory of democratic
government is not that the will of the people is
always right, but rather that normal human
beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance,
learn the right and best course by bitter experi-
ence. This is precisely what the Negro voters
showed indubitable signs of doing. First they
strove for schools to abolish ignorance, and second,
a large and growing number of them revolted
against the extravagance and stealing that
marred the beginning of Reconstruction, and
joined with the best elements to institute re-
form. The greatest stigma on the white South is
not that it opposed Negro suffrage and resented
theft and incompetence, but that, when it saw
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 217
the reform movements growing and even in
some cases triumphing, and a larger and larger
number of black voters learning to vote for honesty
and ability, it still preferred a Reign of Terror
to a campaign of education and disfranchised
Negroes instead of punishing rascals.
No one has expressed this more convincingly
than a Negro who was himself a member of the
Reconstruction legislature of South Carolina,
and who spoke at the convention which disfran-
chised him against one of the onslaughts of Till-
' man. “We were eight years in power. We had
built school houses, established charitable in-
stitutions, built and maintained the penitentiary
system, provided for the education of the deaf
and dumb, rebuilt the jails and court houses,
rebuilt the bridges, and reestablished the ferries.
In short, we had reconstructed the state and
placed it upon the road to prosperity, and at the
same time, by our acts of financial reform, trans-
mitted to the Hampton government an indebted-
ness not greater by more than two and a half
million dollars than was the bonded debt of the
state in 1868, before the Republican Negroes
and their white allies came into power.” 1
So, too, in Louisiana in 1872, and in Missis-
sippi later, the better element of the Republicans
, triumphed at the polls and, joining with the
Democrats, instituted reforms, repudiated the
worst extravagance, and started toward better
things. Unfortunately there was one thing
1 Occasional Papers, American Negro Academy, No. 6.
218
THE NEGRO
that the white South feared more than Negro
dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and
that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and effi-
ciency.
In the midst of all these difficulties the Negro
governments in the South accomplished much of
positive good. We may recognize three things
which Negro rule gave to the South: (1) demo-
cratic government, (2) free public schools, (3) new
social legislation.
In general, the words of Judge Albion W.
Tourgee, a white “carpet bagger,” are true when
he says of the Negro governments, “They obeyed
the Constitution of the United States and annulled
the bonds of states, counties, and cities which
had been issued to carry on the War of Rebellion
and maintain armies in the field against the
Union. They instituted a public school system
in a realm where public schools had been unknown.
They opened the ballot box and the jury box to
thousands of white men who had been debarred
from them by a lack of earthly possessions.
They introduced home rule into the South.
They abolished the whipping post, the branding
iron, the stocks, and other barbarous forms of
punishment which had up to that time pre-
vailed. They reduced capital felonies from
about twenty to two or three. In an age of ex-
travagance they were extravagant in the sums
appropriated for public works. In all of that
time no man’s rights of persons were invaded
under the forms of law. Every Democrat’s
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 219
life, home, fireside, and business were safe. No
man obstructed any white man’s way to the bal-
lot box, interfered with his freedom of speech,
or boycotted him on account of his political
faith.” 1
A thorough study of the legislation accom-
panying these constitutions and its changes since
shows the comparatively small amount of change
in law and government which the overthrow of
Negro rule brought about. There were sharp and
often hurtful economies introduced, marking
the return of property to power; there was a
sweeping change of officials, but the main body
of Reconstruction legislation stood. The Re-
construction democracy brought forth new
leaders and definitely overthrew the old Southern
aristocracy. Among these new men were Negroes
of worth and ability. John R. Lynch, when
Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representa-
tives, was given a public testimonial by Repub-
licans and Democrats, and the leading white
paper said, “His bearing in office had been so
proper, and his rulings in such marked con-
trast to the partisan conduct of the ignoble whites
of his party who have aspired to be leaders of
the blacks, that the conservatives cheerfully
joined in the testimonial.” 2
Of the colored treasurer of South Carolina the
white Governor Chamberlain said, “I have
never heard one word or seen one act of Mr.
1 Occasional Papers, American Negro Academy, No. 6.
* Jackson (Miss.) Clarion, April 24, 1873.
220
THE NEGRO
Cardoza’s which did not confirm my confidence
in his personal integrity and his political honor
and zeal for the honest administration of the
state government. On every occasion, and
under all circumstances, he has been against
fraud and robbery and in favor of good meas-
ures and good men.” 1
Jonathan C. Gibbs, a colored man and the first
state superintendent of instruction in Florida,
was a graduate of Dartmouth. He established
the system and brought it to success, dying in
harness in 1874. Such men — and there were
others — ought not to be forgotten or confounded
with other types of colored and white Reconstruc-
tion leaders.
There is no doubt that the thirst of the black
man for knowledge, a thirst which has been too
persistent and durable to be mere curiosity or
whim, gave birth to the public school system of
the South. It was the question upon which black
voters and legislators insisted more than any-
thing else, and while it is possible to find some
vestiges of free schools in some of the Southern
States before the war, yet a universal, well-
established system dates from the day that the
black man got political power.
Finally, in legislation covering property, the
wider functions of the state, the punishment of
crime and the like, it is sufficient to say that the
laws on these points established by Reconstruc-
tion legislatures were not only different from and
1 Allen: Governor Chamberlain’ s Administration, p. 82.
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 221
even revolutionary to the laws in the older South,
but they were so wise and so well suited to the
needs of the new South that, in spite of a retro-
gressive movement following the overthrow of the
1 Negro governments, the mass of this legislation,
with elaborations and development, still stands
on the statute books of the South.1
The triumph of reaction in the South inaugu-
rated a new era in which we may distinguish
three phases : the renewed attempt to reduce the
Negroes to serfdom, the rise of the Negro metayer,
and the economic disfranchisement of the South-
ern working class.
The attempt to replace individual slavery
had been frustrated by the Freedmen’s Bureau
and the Fifteenth Amendment. The disfranchise-
ment of 1876 was followed by the widespread
rise of “crime” peonage. Stringent laws on
vagrancy, guardianship, and labor contracts
were enacted and large discretion given judge
and jury in cases of petty crime. As a result
Negroes were systematically arrested on the
slightest pretext and the labor of convicts leased
to private parties. This “convict lease system”
was almost universal in the South until about
1890, when its outrageous abuses and cruelties
aroused the whole country. It still survives
over wide areas, and is not only responsible for
the impression that the Negro is a natural
1 Reconstruction Constitutions, practically unaltered,
were kept in Florida, 1868-85, seventeen years; Virginia,
1870-1902, thirty-two years; South Carolina, 1868-95,
twenty-seven years; Mississippi, 1868-90, twenty-two years.
222
THE NEGRO
criminal, but also for the inability of the Southern
courts to perform their normal functions after
so long a prostitution to ends far removed from
justice.
In more normal economic lines the employers
began with the labor contract system. Before
the war they owned labor, land, and subsistence.
After the war they still held the land and sub-
sistence. The laborer was hired and the sub-
sistence “advanced” to him while the crop was
growing. The fall of the Freedmen’s Bureau
hindered the transmutation of this system into
a modern wage system, and allowed the laborers
to be cheated by high interest charges on the
subsistence advanced and actual cheating often
in book accounts.
The black laborers became deeply dissatisfied
under this system and began to migrate from
the country to the cities, where there was an
increasing demand for labor. The employing
farmers complained bitterly of the scarcity of
labor and of Negro “laziness,” and secured
the enactment of harsher vagrancy and labor
contract laws, and statutes against the “entice-
ment” of laborers. So severe were these laws
that it was often impossible for a laborer to stop
work without committing a felony. Nevertheless
competition compelled the landholders to offer
more inducements to the farm hand. The result
was the rise of the black share tenant: the
laborer securing better wages saved a little
capital and began to hire land in parcels of forty
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 223
to eighty acres, furnishing his own tools and
seed and practically raising his own subsistence.
In this way the whole face of the labor contract
in the South was, in the decade 1880-90, in
process of change from a nominal wage contract
to a system of tenantry. The great plantations
were apparently broken up into forty and
eighty acre farms with black farmers. To many
it seemed that emancipation was accomplished,
and the black folk were especially filled with
joy and hope.
It soon was evident, however, that the change
was only partial. The landlord still held the land
in large parcels. He rented this in small farms
to tenants, but retained direct control. In
theory the laborer was furnishing capital, but in
the majority of cases he was borrowing at least a
part of this capital from some merchant.
The retail merchant in this way entered on
the scene as middle man between landlord and
laborer. He guaranteed the landowner his rent
and relieved him of details by taking over the
furnishing of supplies to the laborer. He tempted
the laborer by a larger stock of more attractive
goods, made a direct contract with him, and took
a mortgage on the growing crop. Thus he soon
became the middle man to whom the profit of the
transaction largely flowed, and he began to get
rich.
If the new system benefited the merchant and
the landlord, it also brought some benefits to
the black laborers. Numbers of these were
224
THE NEGRO
still held in peonage, and the mass were laborers
working for scant board and clothes; but above
these began to rise a large number of independent
tenants and farm owners.
In 1890, therefore, the South was faced by this
question: Are we willing to allow the Negro to
advance as a free worker, peasant farmer,
metayer, and small capitalist, with only such
handicaps as naturally impede the poor and
ignorant, or is it necessary to erect further arti-
ficial barriers to restrain the advance of the
Negroes? The answer was clear and unmis-
takable. The advance of the freedmen had
been too rapid and the South feared it; every
effort must be made to “keep the Negro in his
place” as a servile caste.
To this end the South strove to make the dis-
franchisement of the Negroes effective and final.
Up to this time disfranchisement was illegal and
based on intimidation. The new laws passed
between 1890 and 1910 sought on their face to
base the right to vote on property and education
in such a way as to exclude poor and illiterate
Negroes and admit all whites. In fact they could
be administered so as to exclude nearly all Ne-
groes. To this was added a series of laws designed
publicly to humiliate and stigmatize Negro blood:
as, for example, separate railway cars; separate
seats in street cars, and the like; these things
were added to the separation in schools and
churches, and the denial of redress to seduced
colored women, which had long been the custom
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 225
in the South. All these new enactments meant
not simply separation, but subordination, caste,
humiliation, and flagrant injustice.
To all this was added a series of labor laws
making the exploitation of Negro labor more
secure. All this legislation had to be accomplished
in the face of the labor movement throughout
the world, and particularly in the South, where
it was beginning to enter among the white work-
ers. This was accomplished easily, however, by
an appeal to race prejudice. No method of in-
flaming the darkest passions of men was unused.
The lynching mob was given its glut of blood and
egged on by purposely exaggerated and often
wholly invented tales of crime on the part of
perhaps the most peaceful and sweet-tempered
race the world has ever known. Under the flame
of this outward noise went the more subtle and
dangerous work. The election laws passed in the
states where three-fourths of the Negroes live,
were so ingeniously framed that a black university
graduate could be prevented from voting and the
most ignorant white hoodlum could be admitted
to the polls. Labor laws were so arranged that
imprisonment for debt was possible and leaving
an employer could be made a penitentiary offense.
Negro schools were cut off with small appropria-
tions or wholly neglected, and a determined effort
was made with wide success to see that no Negro
had any voice either in the making or the admin-
istration of local, state, or national law.
The acquiescence of the white labor vote of
226
THE NEGRO
the South was further insured by throwing white
and black laborers, so far as possible, into rival
competing groups and making each feel that the
one was the cause of the other’s troubles. The
neutrality of the white people of the North was
secured through their fear for the safety of large
investments in the South, and through the fatal-
istic attitude common both in America and Europe
toward the possibility of real advance on the part
of the darker nations.
The reaction of the Negro Americans upon
this wholesale and open attempt to reduce them
to serfdom has been interesting. Naturally
they began to organize and protest and in some
cases to appeal to the courts. Then, to their
astonishment, there arose a colored leader, Mr.
Booker T. Washington, who advised them to
yield to disfranchisement and caste and wait for
greater economic strength and general efficiency
before demanding full rights as American citizens.
The white South naturally agreed with Mr. Wash-
ington, and the white North thought they saw
here a chance for peace in the racial conflict and
safety for their Southern investments.
For a time the colored people hesitated. They
respected Mr. Washington for shrewdness and
recognized the wisdom of his homely insistence
on thrift and hard work; but gradually they
came to see more and more clearly that, stripped
of political power and emasculated by caste,
they could never gain sufficient economic strength
to take their place as modern men. They also
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 227
realized that any lull in their protests would be
taken advantage of by Negro haters to push their
caste program. They began, therefore, with
renewed persistence to fight for their fundamental
rights as American citizens. The struggle tended
at first to bitter personal dissension within the
group. But wiser counsels and the advice of
white friends eventually prevailed and raised it
to the broad level of a fight for the fundamental
principles of democracy. The launching of the
“Niagara Movement” by twenty-nine daring
colored men in 1905, followed by the formation
of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People in 1910, marked an epoch in the
advance of the Negro. This latter organization,
with its monthly organ, The Crisis, is now waging
a nation-wide fight for justice to Negroes. Other
organizations, and a number of strong Negro
weekly papers are aiding in this fight. What
has been the net result of this struggle of half
a century?
In 1863 there were about five million persons
of Negro descent in the United States. Of these,
four million and more were just being released
from slavery. These slaves could be bought and
sold, could move from place to place only with
permission, were forbidden to learn to read or
write, and legally could never hold property or
marry. Ninety per cent were totally illiterate,
and only one adult in six was a nominal Chris-
tian.
Fifty years later, in 1913, there were in the
228
THE NEGRO
United States ten and a quarter million persons
of Negro descent, an increase of one hundred
and five per cent. Legal slavery has been abol-
ished leaving, however, vestiges in debt slavery,
peonage, and the convict lease system. The mass
of the freedmen and their sons have
1. Earned a living as free and partially free
laborers.
2. Shared the responsibilities of government.
3. Developed the internal organization of
their race.
4. Aspired to spiritual self-expression.
The Negro was freed as a penniless, landless,
naked, ignorant laborer. There were a few free
Negroes who owned property in the South, and
a larger number who owned property in the
North; but ninety -nine per cent of the race in
the South were penniless field hands and servants.
To-day there are two and a half million labor-
ers, the majority of whom are efficient wage
earners. Above these are more than a million
servants and tenant farmers; skilled and semi-
skilled workers make another million and at the
top of the economic column are 600,000 owners
and managers of farms and businesses, cash
tenants, officials, and professional men. This
makes a total of 5,192,535 colored breadwinners
in 1910.
More specifically these breadwinners include
218,972 farm owners and 319,346 cash farm ten-
ants and managers. There were in all 62,755
miners, 288,141 in the building and hand trades;
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 229
28,515 workers in clay, glass, and stone; 41,739
iron and steel workers; 134,102 employees on
railways; 62,822 draymen, cab drivers, and
liverymen; 133,245 in wholesale and retail
trade; 32,170 in the public service; and 69,471
in professional service, including 29,750 teachers,
17,495 clergymen, and 4,546 physicians, dentists,
trained nurses, etc. Finally, we must not forget
2,175,000 Negro homes, with their housewives,
and 1,620,000 children in school.
Fifty years ago the overwhelming mass of these
people were not only penniless, but were them-
selves assessed as real estate. By 1875 the
Negroes probably had gotten hold of something
between 2,000,000 and 4,000,000 acres of land
through their bounties as soldiers and the low
price of land after the war. By 1880 this was
increased to about 6,000,000 acres; in 1890 to
about 8,000,000 acres; in 1900 to over 12,000,000
acres. In 1910 this land had increased to nearly
20,000,000 acres, a realm as large as Ireland.
The 120,738 farms owned by Negroes in 1890
increased to 218,972 in 1910, or eighty-one per
cent. The value of these farms increased from
$179,796,639 in 1900 to $440,992,439 in 1910;
Negroes owned in 1910 about 500,000 homes out
of a total of 2,175,000. Their total property in
1900 was estimated at $300,000,000 by the
American Economic Association. On the same
basis of calculation it would be worth to-day not
less than $800,000,000.
Despite the disfranchisement of three-fourths
230
THE NEGRO
of his voting population, the Negro to-day is a
recognized part of the American government.
He holds 7,500 offices in the executive service of
the nation, besides furnishing four regiments in
the army and a large number of sailors. In the
state and municipal service he holds nearly 20,000
other offices, and he furnishes 500,000 of the votes
which rule the Union.
In these same years the Negro has relearned
the lost art of organization. Slavery was the
almost absolute denial of initiative and responsi-
bility. To-day Negroes have nearly 40,000
churches, with edifices worth at least $75,000,000
and controlling nearly 4,000,000 members. They
raise themselves $7,500,000 a year for these
churches.
There are 200 private schools and colleges
managed and almost entirely supported by
Negroes, and these and other public and private
Negro schools have received in 40 years $45,000,-
000 of Negro money in taxes and donations.
Five millions a year are raised by Negro secret
and beneficial societies which hold at least
$6,000,000 in real estate. Negroes support wholly
or in part over 100 old folks’ homes and orphan-
ages, 30 hospitals, and 500 cemeteries. Their or-
ganized commercial life is extending rapidly and
includes over 22,000 small retail businesses and
40 banks.
Above and beyond this material growth has
gone the spiritual uplift of a great human race.
From contempt and amusement they have passed
NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES 231
to the pity, perplexity, and fear on the part of
their neighbors, while within their own souls
they have arisen from apathy and timid com-
plaint to open protest and more and more manly
self-assertion. Where nine-tenths of them could
not read or write in 1860, to-day over two-thirds
can; they have 300 papers and periodicals, and
their voice and expression are compelling at-
tention.
Already in poetry, literature, music, and paint-
ing the work of Americans of Negro descent has
gained notable recognition. Instead of being
led and defended by others, as in the past,
American Negroes are gaining their own leaders,
their own voices, their own ideals. Self-realiza-
tion is thus coming slowly but surely to another
of the world’s great races, and they are to-day
girding themselves to fight in the van of progress,
not simply for their own rights as men, but for
the ideals of the greater world in which they
live: the emancipation of women, universal
peace, democratic government, the socialization
of wealth, and human brotherhood.
CHAPTER XII
THE NEGRO PROBLEMS
It is impossible to separate the population of
the world accurately by race, since that is no
scientific criterion by which to divide races.
If we divide the world, however, roughly into
African Negroes and Negroids, European whites,
and Asiatic and American brown and yellow
peoples, we have approximately 150,000,000
Negroes, 500,000,000 whites, and 900,000,000
yellow and brown peoples. Of the 150,000,000
Negroes, 121,000,000 live in Africa, 27,000,000 1
in the new world, and 2,000,000 in Asia.
What is to be the future relation of the Negro
race to the rest of the world? The visitor from
Altruria might see here no peculiar problem.
He would expect the Negro race to develop along
the lines of other human races. In Africa his
economic and political development would re-
store and eventually outrun the ancient glories
of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Yoruba; overseas the
West Indies would become a new and nobler
Africa, built in the very pathway of the new
1 Sir Harry Johnston estimates 135,000,000 Negroes,
of whom 24,591,000 live in America. See Inter-Racial Prob-
lems, p. 335.
232
THE NEGRO PROBLEMS
233
highway of commerce between East and West —
the real sea route to India; while in the United
States a large part of its citizenship (showing for
perhaps centuries their dark descent, but never-
theless equal sharers of and contributors to the
civilization of the West) would be the descend-
ants of the wretched victims of the seventeenth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth century slave trade.
This natural assumption of a stranger finds,
however, lodging in the minds of few present-
day thinkers. On the contrary, such an outcome
is usually dismissed summarily. Most persons
have accepted that tacit but clear modern philos-
ophy which assigns to the white race alone the
hegemony of the world and assumes that other
races, and particularly the Negro race, will
either be content to serve the interests of the
whites or die out before their all-conquering
march. This philosophy is the child of the
African slave trade and of the expansion of
Europe during the nineteenth century.
The Negro slave trade was the first step in
modern world commerce, followed by the
modern theory of colonial expansion. Slaves as
an article of commerce were shipped as long as
the traffic paid. When the Americas had enough
black laborers for their immediate demand,
the moral action of the eighteenth century had
a chance to make its faint voice heard.
The moral repugnance was powerfully reen-
forced by the revolt of the slaves in the West
Indies and South America, and by the fact
234
THE NEGRO
that North America early began to regard itself
as the seat of advanced ideas in politics, religion,
and humanity.
Finally European capital began to find better
investments than slave shipping and flew to
them. These better investments were the fruit
of the new industrial revolution of the nine-
teenth century, with its factory system; they
were also in part the result of the cheapened price
of gold and silver, brought about by slavery and
the slave trade to the new world. Commodities
other than gold, and commodities capable of
manufacture and exploitation in Europe out of
materials furnishable by America, became en-
hanced in value; the bottom fell out of the com-
mercial slave trade and its suppression became
possible.
The middle of the nineteenth century saw the
beginning of the rise of the modern working class.
By means of political power the laborers slowly
but surely began to demand a larger share in
the profiting industry. In the United States
their demand bade fair to be halted by the com-
petition of slave labor. The labor vote, therefore,
first confined slavery to limits in which it could
not live, and when the slave power sought to
exceed these territorial limits, it was suddenly
and unintentionally abolished.
As the emancipation of millions of dark workers
took place in the West Indies, North and South
America, and parts of Africa at this time, it
was natural to assume that the uplift of this
THE NEGRO PROBLEMS
235
working class lay along the same paths with
that of European and American whites. This
was the first suggested solution of the Negro
problem. Consequently these Negroes received
partial enfranchisement, the beginnings of edu-
cation, and some of the elementary rights of
wage earners and property holders, while the
independence of Liberia and Hayti was recog-
nized. However, long before they were strong
enough to assert the rights thus granted or to
gather intelligence enough for proper group
leadership, the new colonialism of the later nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries began to dawn.
The new colonial theory transferred the reign
of commercial privilege and extraordinary profit
from the exploitation of the European working
class to the exploitation of backward races under
the political domination of Europe. For the
purpose of carrying out this idea the European
and white American working class was prac-
tically invited to share in this new exploitation,
and particularly were flattered by popular ap-
peals to their inherent superiority to “Dagoes,”
“Chinks,” “Japs,” and “Niggers.”
This tendency was strengthened by the fact
that the new colonial expansion centered in
Africa. Thus in 1875 something less than one-
tenth of Africa was under nominal European
control, but the Franco-Prussian War and the
exploration of the Congo led to new and fateful
things. Germany desired economic expansion
and, being shut out from America by the Monroe
236
THE NEGRO
Doctrine, turned to Africa. France, humiliated
in war, dreamed of an African empire from the
Atlantic to the Red Sea. Italy became ambitious
for Tripoli and Abyssinia. Great Britain began
to take new interest in her African realm, but
found herself largely checkmated by the jealousy
of all Europe. Portugal sought to make good her
ancient claim to the larger part of the whole
southern peninsula. It was Leopold of Belgium
who started to make the exploration and civiliza-
tion of Africa an international movement. This
project failed, and the Congo Free State became
in time simply a Belgian colony. While the
project was under discussion, the international
scramble for Africa began. As a result the Berlin
Conference and subsequent wars and treaties
gave Great Britain control of 2,101,411 square
miles of African territory, in addition to Egypt
and the Egyptian Sudan with 1,600,000 square
miles. This includes South Africa, Bechuanaland
and Rhodesia, East Africa, Uganda and Zanzibar,
Nigeria, and British West Africa. The French
hold 4,106,950 square miles, including nearly
all North Africa (except Tripoli) west of the Niger
valley and Libyan Desert, and touching the At-
lantic at four points. To this is added the Island
of Madagascar. The Germans have 910,150
square miles, principally in Southeast and South-
west Africa and the Kamerun. The Portuguese
retain 787,500 square miles in Southeast and
Southwest Africa. The Belgians have 900,000
square miles, while Liberia (43,000 square miles)
THE NEGRO PROBLEMS
237
and Abyssinia (350,000 square miles) are inde-
pendent. The Italians have about 600,000 square
miles and the Spanish less than 100,000 square
miles.
This partition of Africa brought revision of the
ideas of Negro uplift. Why was it necessary,
the European investors argued, to push a conti-
nent of black workers along the paths of social
uplift by education, trades-unionism, property
holding, and the electoral franchise when the
workers desired no change, and the rate of Euro-
pean profit would suffer ?
There quickly arose then the second suggestion
for settling the Negro problem. It called for the
virtual enslavement of natives in certain indus-
tries, as rubber and ivory collecting in the Belgian
Congo, cocoa raising in Portuguese Angola, and
diamond mining in South Africa. This new
slavery or “forced” labor was stoutly defended
as a necessary foundation for implanting modern
industry in a barbarous land; but its likeness to
slavery was too clear and it has been modified,
but not wholly abolished.
, The third attempted solution of the Negro
sought the result of the second by less direct
methods. Negroes in Africa, the WTest Indies,
and America were to be forced to work by land
monopoly, taxation, and little or no education.
In this way a docile industrial class working for
low wages, and not intelligent enough to unite in
labor unions, was to be developed. The peonage
systems in parts of the United States and the labor
238
THE NEGRO
systems of many of the African colonies of Great
Britain and Germany illustrate this phase of
solution.1 It is also illustrated in many of the
West Indian islands where we have a predominant
Negro population, and this population freed from
slavery and partially enfranchised. Land and
capital, however, have for the most part been
so managed amd monopolized that the black
peasantry have been reduced to straits to earn
a living in one of the richest parts of the world.
The problem is now going to be intensified when
the world’s commerce begins to sweep through
the Panama Canal.
All these solutions and methods, however,
run directly counter to modern philanthropy,
and have to be carried on with a certain conceal-
ment and half-hypocrisy which is not only
distasteful in itself, but always liable to be dis-
covered and exposed by some liberal or religious
movement of the masses of men and suddenly
overthrown. These solutions are, therefore, grad-
ually merging into a fourth solution, which is
to-day very popular. This solution says : Negroes
differ from whites in their inherent genius and
stage of development. Their development must
not, therefore, be sought along European lines,
1 The South African natives, in an appeal to the English
Parliament, show in an astonishing way the confiscation of
their land by the English. They say that in the Union of
South Africa 1,250,000 whites own 264,000,000 acres of land,
while the 4,500,000 natives have only 21,000,000 acres. On
top of this the Union Parliament has passed a law making
even the future purchase of land by Negroes illegal save in
restricted areas!
THE NEGRO PROBLEMS
239
but along their own native lines. Consequently
the effort is made to-day in British Nigeria, in
the French Congo and Sudan, in Uganda and
Rhodesia to leave so far as possible the outward
structure of native life intact; the king or chief
reigns, the popular assemblies meet and act,
the native courts adjudicate, and native social
and family life and religion prevail. All this,
however, is subject to the veto and command of
a European magistracy supported by a native
army with European officers. The advantage of
this method is that on its face it carries no clue
to its real working. Indeed it can always point
to certain undoubted advantages: the abolition
of the slave trade, the suppression of war and
feud, the encouragement of peaceful industry.
On the other hand, back of practically all these
experiments stands the economic motive — the
determination to use the organization, the land,
and the people, not for their own benefit, but for
the benefit of white Europe. For this reason
education is seldom encouraged, modern religious
ideas are carefully limited, sound political de-
velopment is sternly frowned upon, and industry
is degraded and changed to the demands of
European markets. The most ruthless class of
white mercantile exploiters is allowed large liberty,
if not a free hand, and protected by a concerted
attempt to deify white men as such in the eyes
of the native and in their own imagination.1
1 The traveler Glave writes in the Century Magazine
(LIII, 913) : “Formerly (in the Congo Free State] an ordinary
240
THE NEGRO
White missionary societies are spending per-
haps as much as five million dollars a year in
Africa and accomplishing much good, but at the
same time white merchants are sending at least
twenty million dollars’ worth of European liquor
into Airica each year, and the debauchery of the
almost unrestricted rum traffic goes far to neu-
tralize missionary effort.
Under this last mentioned solution of the Negro
problems we may put the attempts at the segrega-
tion of Negroes and mulattoes in the United States
and to some extent in the West Indies. Ostensi-
bly this is “separation” of the races in society,
civil rights, etc. In practice it is the subordina-
tion of colored people of all grades under white
tutelage, and their separation as far as possible
from contact with civilization in dwelling place,
in education, and in public life.
On the other hand the economic significance
of the Negro to-day is tremendous. Black
Africa to-day exports annually nearly two hun-
dred million dollars’ worth of goods, and its
economic development has scarcely begun. The
black West Indies export nearly one hundred mil-
lion dollars’ worth of goods; to this must be added
the labor value of Negroes in South Africa, Egypt,
the West Indies, North, Central, and South
America, where the result is blended in the com-
mon output of many races. The economic foun-
white man was merely called ‘bwana’ or ‘Mzunga’; now
the merest insect of a pale face earns the title of ‘bwana
Mkubwa’ [big masterl.”
THE NEGRO PROBLEMS
241
dation of the Negro problem can easily be seen
to be a matter of many hundreds of millions
to-day, and ready to rise to the billions to-
morrow.
Such figures and facts give some slight idea of
the economic meaning of the Negro to-day as a
worker and industrial factor. “Tropical Africa
and its peoples are being brought more irrevo-
cably every year into the vortex of the economic
influences that sway the western world.” 1
What do Negroes themselves think of these
their problems and the attitude of the world
toward them? First and most significant, they
are thinking. There is as yet no great single
centralizing of thought or unification of opinion,
but there are centers which are growing larger
and larger and touching edges. The most
significant centers of this new thinking are, per-
haps naturally, outside Africa and in America:
in the United States and in the West Indies;
this is followed by South Africa and West Africa
and then, more vaguely, by South America, with
faint beginnings in East Central Africa, Nigeria,
and the Sudan.
The Pan-African movement when it comes will
not, however, be merely a narrow racial propa-
ganda. Already the more far-seeing Negroes
sense the coming unities: a unity of the working
classes everywhere, a unity of the colored races,
a new unity of men. The proposed economic
solution of the Negro problem in Africa and
1 E. D. Morel, in the Nineteenth Century.
242
THE NEGRO
America has turned the thoughts of Negroes
toward a realization of the fact that the modern
white laborer of Europe and America has the
key to the serfdom of black folk, in his support of
militarism and colonial expansion. He is begin-
ning to say to these workingmen that, so long as
black laborers are slaves, white laborers cannot
be free. Already there are signs in South Africa
and the United States of the beginning of under-
standing between the two classes.
In a conscious sense of unity among colored
races there is to-day only a growing interest.
There is slowly arising not only a curiously
strong brotherhood of Negro blood throughout
the world, but the common cause of the darker
races against the intolerable assumptions and
insults of Europeans has already found expres-
sion. Most men in this world are colored. A
belief in humanity means a belief in colored men.
The future world will, in all reasonable prob-
ability, be what colored men make it. In order
for this colored world to come into its heritage,
must the earth again be drenched in the blood of
fighting, snarling human beasts, or will Reason
and Good Will prevail? That such may be true,
the character of the Negro race is the best and
greatest hope; for in its normal condition it is
at once the strongest and gentlest of the races of
men: “Semper novi quid ex Africa!”
Distribution of Negro Blood, Ancient and Modern
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER
READING
There is no general history of the Negro race. Perhaps
Sir Harry H. Johnston, in his various works on Africa, has
come as near covering the subject as any one writer, but his
valuable books have puzzling inconsistencies and inaccuracies.
Keane’s Africa is a helpful compendium, despite the fact
that whenever Keane discovers intelligence in an African he
immediately discovers that its possessor is no “Negro.” The
articles in the latest edition of the Encylopcedia Britannica are
of some value, except the ridiculous article on the “Negro”
by T. A. Joyce. Frobenius’ newly published Voice of Africa
is broad-minded and informing, and Brown’s Story of Africa
and its Explorers brings together much material in readable
form. The compendiums by Keltie and White, and John-
ston’s Opening up of Africa are the best among the shorter
treatises.
None of these authors write from the point of view of the
Negro as a man, or with anything but incidental acknowledg-
ment of the existence or value of his history. We may, how-
ever, set down certain books under the various subjects which
the chapters have treated. These books will consist of
(1) standard works for wider reading and (2) special works
on which the author has relied for his statements or which
amplify his point of view. The latter are starred.
THE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF AFRICA
A. S. White: The Development of Africa, 2d ed., 1892.
Stanford’s Compendium of Geography: Africa, by A. H.
Keane, 2d ed., 1904-7.
E. Reclus: Universal Geography, Vols. X-XITI.
244
SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 245
RACIAL DIFFERENCES AND THE ORIGIN AND CHARACTERISTICS
OF NEGROES
J. Deniker: The Races of Man, etc., New York, 1904.
*J. Finot: Race Prejudice (tr. by Wade-Evans), New York,
1907.
*W. Z. Ripley: The Races of Europe, etc., New York, 1899.
‘Jacques Loeb: in The Crisis, Vol. VIII, p. 84, Vol. IX, p. 92.
*Papers on Inter-Racial Problems Communicated to the First
Universal Races Congress, etc. (ed. by G. Spiller),
1911.
*G. Sergi: The Mediterranean Race, etc., London, 1901.
‘Franz Boas: The Mind of Primitive Man, New York, 1911.
C. B. Davenport: Heredity of Skin Color in Negro-White
Crosses, 1913.
early movements of the negro race
‘Sir Harry H. Johnston: The Opening up of Africa (Home
University Library).
A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races,
Cambridge, 1905.
‘G. W. Stowe: The Native Races of South Africa (ed. by G. M.
Theal), London, 1910.
(Consult also Johnston’s other works on Africa, and his
article in Vol. XLIII of the Journal of the Royal Anthropolog-
ical Institute of Great Britain and Ireland; also Inter-Racial
Problems, and Deniker, noted above.)
NEGRO IN ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT
(The works of Breasted and Petrie, Maspero, Budge and
Newberry and Garstang are the standard books on Egypt.
They mention the Negro, but incidentally and often slight-
ingly-)
*A. F. Chamberlain: “The Contribution of the Negro to
Human Civilization” ( Journal of Race Development,
Vol. I, April, 1911).
246 SUGGESTIONS FOR READING
T. E. S. Scholes: Glimpses of the Ages, etc., London, 1905.
W. H. Ferris: The African Abroad, etc., 2 vols., New Haven,
1913.
E. A. W. Budge: The Egyptian Sudan, 2 vols., 1907.
* Archeological Survey of Nubia.
*A. Thompson and D. Randal McIver: The Ancient Races
of the Thebaid, 1905.
ABYSSINIA
Job Ludolphus: A New History of Ethiopia (tr. by Gent),
London, 1682.
W. S. Harris: Highlands of /. Ethiopia , 3 vols., London, 1844.
R. S. Whiteway: The Portuguese Expedition to Abyssinia . . .
as narrated by Castanhosa, etc., 1902.
THE NIGER RIVER AND ISLAM
*F. L. Shaw (Lady Lugard) : A Tropical Dependency, etc.,
London, 1906.
(The reader may dismiss as worthless Lady Lugard’s
definition of “Negro.” Otherwise her book is excellent.)
*Es-Sa’di, Abderrahman Ben Abdallah, etc., translated
into French by O. Houdas, Paris, 1900.
*F. DdBois: Timbuktu the Mysterious (tr. by White), 1896.
*W. D. Cooley: The Negroland of the Arabs, etc., 1841.
*H. Barth: Travels and Discoveries in North and Central
Africa, etc., 5 vols., 1857-58.
*Ibn Batuta : Travels, etc. (tr. by Lee), 1829.
*Leo Africanus: The History and Description of Africa, etc.
(tr. by Pory, ed. by R. Brown), 3 vols., 1896.
*E. W. Blyden: Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race.
*Leo Frobenius: The Voice of Africa (tr. by Blind), 2 vols.,
1913.
Mungo Park: Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, 1799.
THE NEGRO ON THE GUINEA COAST
*Leo Frobenius (as above).
Sir Harry H. Johnston: Liberia, 2 vols.. New York, 1906.
H. H. Foote: Africa and the American Flag, New York, 1859.
SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 247
T. H. T. McPherson: A History of Liberia, Baltimore, Johns
Hopkins Studies.
T. J. Alldridge: A Transformed Colony (Sierra Leone), Lon-
don, 1910.
E. D. Morel: Affairs of West Africa, 1902.
H. L. Roth: Great Benin and Its Customs, 1903.
*F. Starr: Liberia, 1913.
W. Jay: An Inquiry, etc., 1835.
*A. B. Ellis: The T shi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast,
1887.
The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, 1890.
The Yoruba- speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, 1894.
C. H. Read and O. M. Dalton: Antiquities from the City of
Benin, etc., 1899.
*M. H. Kingsley: West African Studies, 2d ed., 1904.
*G. W. Ellis: Negro Culture in West Africa (Vai-speaking
peoples), 1914.
THE CONGO VALLEY
*G. Schweinfurth: The Heart of Africa, Vol. II, 1873.
*H. M. Stanley: Through the Dark Continent, 2 vols., 1878.
In Darkest Africa, 2 vols., 1890.
The Congo, etc., 2 vols., London, 1885.
H. von Wissman: My Second Journey through Equatorial
Africa, 1891.
*H. R. Fox-Bourne: Civilization in Congoland, 1903.
Sir Harry H. Johnston: George Grenfell and the Congo, 2
vols., London, 1908.
*E. D. Morel: Red Rubber, London, 1906.
the negro in the region of the great lakes
*Sir Harry H. Johnston: The Uganda Protectorate, 2d ed.,
2 vols., 1904.
British Central Africa, 1897.
The Nile Quest, 1903.
*D. Randal McIver: Mediaeval Rhodesia, 1906.
*The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa (ed.
by H. Waller), 1874.
248 SUGGESTIONS FOR READING
J. Dos Santos: Ethiopia Oriental (Theal’s Records of South
Africa, Vol. VII).
C. Peters: “Ophir and Punt in South Africa” ( African So-
ciety Journal, Vol. I).
De Barros: De Asia.
R. Burton: Lake Regions of Central Africa, I860.
R. P. Ashe: Chronicles of Uganda, 1894.
(See also Stanley’s works, as above.)
THE NEGRO IN SOUTH AFRICA
*G. M. Theal: History and Ethnography of South Africa of
the Zambesi to 1795, 3 vols., 1907-10.
History of South Africa since September, 1795, 5 vols., 1908.
Records of South Eastern Africa, 9 vols., 1898-1903.
*J. Bryce: Impressions of South Africa, 1897.
D. Livingstone: Missionary Travels in South Africa, 1857.
*South African Native Affairs Commission, 1903-5, Reports,
etc., 5 vols.. Cape Town, 1904-5.
G. Lagden: The Basutos, London, 1909.
J. Stewart: Lovedale, 1884.
(See also Stowe, as above.)
ON NEGRO CIVILIZATION
J. Dowd: The Negro Races, 1907, 1914.
*H. Gregoire: An Inquiry concerning the Intellectual and
Moral Faculties and Literature of Negroes, etc. (tr. by
Warden), Brooklyn, 1810.
C. BOcher: Industrial Evolution (tr. by Wickett), New York,
1904.
*Franz Boas: “The Real Race Problem” {The Crisis, De-
cember, 1910).
Commencement Address (Atlanta University Leaflet,
No. 19).
*F. Ratzel: The History of Mankind (tr. by Butler), 3 vols.,
1904.
C. Hayford: Gold Coast Institutions, 1903.
A. B. Camphor: Missionary Sketches and Folk Lore from
Africa, 1909.
R. H. Nassau: Fetishism in West Africa, 1907.
SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 249
♦William Schneider: Die Culturfdhigkeit des Negers, Frank-
fort, 1885.
*G. Schweinfurth : Arles Africanae, etc., 1875.
Duke of Mecklenburg: From the Congo to the Niger and
the Nile (English tr.), Philadelphia, 1914.
D. Crawford: Thinlcing Black.
R. N. Cust: Sketch of Modern Languages of Africa, 2 vols.,
1883.
H. Chatelain: The Folk Lore of Angola.
D. Kidd: The Essential Kafir, 1904.
Savage Childhood, 1906.
Kafir Socialism and the Dawn of Individualism, 1908.
M. H. Tongue: Bushman Paintings, Oxford, 1909.
(See also the works of A. B. Ellis, Miss Kingsley, Sir Harry
H. Johnston, Frobenius, Stowe, Theal, and Ibn Batuta; and
particularly Chamberlain’s article in the Journal of Race
Development.)
THE SLAVE TRADE
T. K. Ingram: History of Slavery and Serfdom, London, 1895.
(Same article revised in Encyclopeedia Britannica, 11th
edition.)
John R. Spears: The American Slave Trade, 1900.
*T. F. Buxton: The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy, etc.,
1896.
T. Clarkson: History ... of the Abolition of the African Slave
Trade, etc.* 2 vols., 1808.
R. Drake: Revelations of a Slave Smuggler, New York, 1860.
* Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council, etc., London,
1789.
*B. Mayer: Captain Canot or Twenty Years of an African
Slaver, etc., 1854.
W. E. B. DuBois: The suppression of the African Slave-Trade
to the U. S. A., 1896.
(See also Bryan Edwards’ West Indies.)
THE WEST INDIES AND SOUTH AMERICA
Fletcher and Kidder: Brazil and the Brazilians, 1879.
•Bryan Edwards: History ... of the British West Indies, 5
editions, Vols. II-V, 1793-1819.
250 SUGGESTIONS FOR READING
♦Sir Harry H. Johnston: The Negro in the New World, 1910.
T. G. Steward: The Haitian Revolution, 1791-1804, 1914.
J. N. Leger: Haiti, etc., 1907.
J. Bryce: South America, etc., 1912.
*J. B. de Lacerda: “The Metis or Half-Breeds of Brazil’’
( Inter-Racial Problems, etc.).
A. K. Fiske: History of the West Indies, 1899.
THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES
*Walker s Ap-peal, 1829.
*G. W. Williams: History of the Negro Race in America, 1619-
1880, 1882.
B. G. Brawley: A Short History of the American Negro, 1913.
B. T. Washington: Up from Slavery, 1901.
The Story of the Negro, 2 vols., 1909.
*The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored. Man, 1912.
*G. E. Stroud: Sketch of the Laws relating to Slavery, etc.,
1827.
The Human Way: Addresses on Race Problems at the Southern
Sociological Congress, Atlanta, 1913 (ed. by J. E.
McCulloch).
W. J. Simmons: Men of Mark, 1887.
*J. R. Giddings: The Exiles of Florida, 1858.
W. E. Nell: The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution,
etc., 1855.
C. W. Chesnutt: The Marrow of Tradition, 1901.
P. L. Dunbar: Lyrics of Lowly Life, 1896.
*Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, revised edition, 1892.
*H. E. Kreihbel: Afro-American Folk Songs, etc., 1914.
T. P. Fenner and others: Cabin and Plantation Songs, 3d ed.,
1901.
W. F. Allen and others: Slave Songs of the United States, 1867.
W. E. B. DuBois: “The Negro Race in the United States of
America” ( Inter-Racial Problems, etc.).
“The Economics of Negro Emancipation” ( Sociological
Review, October, 1911).
John Brown.
The Philadelphia Negro, 1899.
SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 251
W. E. B. DuBois: “Reconstruction and its Benefits” (Ameri-
can Historical Review, Vol. XV, No. 4).
editor. The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races,
monthly, 1910.
editor, The Atlanta University Studies:
No. 1. Mortality Among Negroes in Cities, 1896.
No. 2. Social and Physical Conditions of Negroes
in Cities, 1897.
No. 3. Some Efforts of Negroes for Social Better-
ment, 1898.
No. 4. The Negro in Business, 1899.
No. 5. The College Bred Negro, 1900.
No. 6. The Negro Common School, 1901.
No. 7. The Negro Artisan, 1902.
No. 8. The Negro Church, 1903.
No. 9. Notes on Negro Crime, 1904.
No. 10. A Select Bibliography of the Negro Ameri-
can, 1905.
No. 11. Health and Physique of the Negro American,
1906.
No. 12. Economic Co-operation among Negro Ameri-
cans, 1907.
No. 13. The Negro American Family, 1908.
No. 14. Efforts for Social Betterment among Negro
Americans, 1909.
No. 15. The College Bred Negro American, 1910.
No. 16. The Common School and the Negro Ameri-
can, 1911.
No. 17. The Negro American Artisan, 1912.
No. 18. Morals and Manners among Negro Ameri-
cans, 1913.
*G. W. Cable: The Silent South, etc., 1885.
*J. R. Lynch: The Facts of Reconstruction, 1913.
*J. T. Wilson: The Black Phalanx, 1897.
William Goodell: Slavery and Anti-Slavery, 1852.
G. S. Merriam: The Negro and the Nation, 1906.
A. B. Hart: The Southern South, 1910.
*G. Livermore: An Historical Research respecting the Opinions
of the Founders of the Republic on Negroes, etc., 1862.
252 SUGGESTIONS FOR READING
Haktshorn and Penniman: An Era of Progress and Promise,
1910 (profusely illustrated).
* James Brewster: Sketches of Southern Mystery, Treason,
and Murder.
Willcox and DuBois: Negroes in the United States (United
States Census of 1900, Bulletin No. 8).
THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO RACE
*J. S. Keltie: The Partition of Africa, 2d ed., 1895.
B. T. Washington: The Future of the Negro.
W. E. B. DuBois: “The Future of the Negro Race in Amer1
ica” ( East and West, Vol. II, No. 5).
Soids of Black Folk, 1913.
Quest of the Silver Fleece.
Alexander Crummell: The Future of Africa, 2d ed., 1862.
*Casely Hayford: Ethiopia Unhound, 1911.
Kelly Miller: Out of the House of Bondage, 1914.
Race Adjustment, 1908.
* J. Royce: Race Questions, etc., 1908.
*R. S. Baker: Following the Color Line, 1908.
N. S. Shaler: The Neighbor.
E. D. Morel: “Free Labor in Tropical Africa” ( Nineteenth
Century and After, 1914).
(See also Finot, Boas, Inter-Racial Problems, and White’s
Development of Africa .)
INDEX
Abolition, 162, 193, 199, 200, 201.
202
Abyssinia, 42 ff.
Africa, civilization in, 27, 103
, exploration of, 17, 18
, partition of, 235
, physiography of, 10
, South, 91
Amendments, war, 213
America, Central, 147, 160, 162, 182
, Latin, 160
, South, 147, 160, 182
An tar, 12, 50
Anti-Slavery Society, 201
Arabs in Africa, 17, 42, 44, 49, 50
Aryan Race, 21
Ashanti, 67, 154
Assyrians, 22
Asiento, 152, 184
Askia, Mohammed, 54
Babylonian Culture, 22
Bantus, 25, 80 ff.
Barbadoes, 178
Benin, 28, 48, 63 ff., 153
Boers, 94
Bolivar, 163, 175, 176
Bornu, 48, 56
Boyer, 176, 177
Brazil, 163-166
Brown, John, 202
Bushmen, 22, 91 ff., 109
Byzantium, 48, 49
Canaan, Curse of, 21
Carthage, 25, 26, 63
Christianity, 42, 128, 129, 187
Church, Negro, 188, 193
Civil War, 202
Climate, 9, 18
Codes, blade, 209
Color, cause of, 15
Congo, 71
Congo Free State, 76
Cotton, 195, 198, 202
Dahomey, 67, 154
Darfur, 44
Disfranchisement, 224, 225
Dominica, 179
Dorantes, Stephen, 161
Douglass, Frederick, 20*, 203
Dutch, 166, 167
Egypt, 25, 27, SO ff.
Emancipation, 203
Ethiopia, 9, 36 ff., 48
Fetish, 124
Folk-lore, 132
Freedmen’s Bank, 216
Freedmen’s Bureau, 206
Fromentius, 42
Fugitive Slaves, 196, 202, 203
Fula, 59
Fung, 44
Garrison, William Lloyd, 199
Ghana, 48, 49, 51
Gricquas, 95
Guiana, 167
Guinea, 62
Greeks in Africa, 17, 25, 41, 42
Ham, story of, 21
Hamites, 16
Hausa, 48, 56
Hayti, 162, 168
Hottentot, 79, 80, 93, 109
Insurrections, 196
Iron, 110-116
Islam, 17, 44, 47, 49, 128
Jamaica, 178, 179
John, Prester, 12, 61
Kaffir, 84, 95
Kanem, 57
Kitwara, 88
Kush, 9, 37, 40
Languages, 130
Las Casas, 148
Leopold II of Belgium, 76, 77, 78
Liberia, 69
254
INDEX
Literature, 131
Luba-Lunda Peoples, 78, 75
Mahdi, 45
Mandingoes, 49
Manufactures, 109-114
Maroons, 179
Martinique, 178
Mansa Musa, 52
Melle, 48, 52
Menelik, 46
Meroe, 38, 40
Mexico, 161
Miscegenation, 14, 16, 20, 22, 23,
31, 32, 56, 94, 140, 141, 164, 183,
184, 185
Mohammedanism, see Islam
Monomotapa, 81
Moors, 57
Mossi, 53, 55, 62, 153
Mulattoes, 14, 23, 24, 31, S3, 94,
101, 140, 164, 185
Napoleon, 171
Nefertari, 35
Negro blood in Asia, 22, 32, 103
blood in Europe, 22, 32
brain, 105
, definition of, 12, 138, 139.
, hair of, 15
, inferiority of the, 12, 104, 139,
140
, problems, 232
.soldiers, 26, 162, 192, 194,
203, 204
types, 24
Negroes, art among, 64, 82, 111,
132, 231
, industry of, 106
, in Spain, 145
, physique of, 104
, primitive, 20, 22
, occupations of, in United
States, 228
Nepata, 38, 40
Niger, 47
Nubia, 42, 43
Nupe, 48, 49, 85, 153
Obi, 189
Ophir, 80, 87
Peonage, 221, 225
Phoenicians, 17, 25, 63
Portuguese, 17, 18, 44, 71, 75
Property, 123
Punt, 9, 36, 79, 80, 91
Pygmies, 22, 91
Quadeloupe, 178
Reconstruction, 205
Religion, 124
Rome in Africa, 17, 25, 42
Schools, 199, 218
Semites, 10
Sheba, Queen of, 42, 87
Sierra Leone, 68
Slave Codes, 189, 195, 196
Slave Trade, 27, 29, 143 ff.
Slave Traders, Dutch, 150
, English, 151
, Portuguese, 146, 147, 150
Songhay, 48, 53
Sonni Ali, 53
Sphinx at Gizeh, 34
Stanley, H. M., 76, 77
State Building, 28
Sudan, 36, 57
Suffrage, Negro, 192, 208, 213
Terence, 11
Timbuktu, 53, 54
Toussaint L’Ouverture, 170 ff.
Tuaregs, 54
Uganda, 88
Underground Railroad, 199, 200
United States, 183
Voodoo, 189
Washington, B. T., 226
Wheatley, Phyllis, 194
Women, 123
Yoruba, 48, 62, 68, 153
Zulus, 84, 95
Zymbabwe, 79 ff.
THE
HOME UNIVERSITY
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thoroughly up to date by additions and revisions.
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AMERICAN HISTORY
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Number]
25. THE CIVIL WAR (1854-1865). By Frederick L.
Paxson, Professor of American History, University of
Wisconsin.
39. RECONSTRUCTION AND UNION (1865-1912).
By Paul Leland Haworth. A History of the United
States in our own times.
47. THE COLONIAL PERIOD (1607-1766). By Charles
McLean Andrews, Professor of American History, Yale.
67. FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN (1815-1860).
By William MacDonald, Professor of History, Brown
University. The author makes the history of this period
circulate about constitutional ideas and slavery sentiment.
82. THE WARS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMER-
ICA (1763-1815). By Theodore C. Smith, Professor of
American History, Williams Collefre. A history of the
period, with especial emphasis on The Revolution and The
War of 1812.
GENERAL HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY
3. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By Hilaire Belloc.
4. A SHORT HISTORY OF WAR AND PEACE. By
G. H. Perris, author of “Russia in Revolution,” etc.
7. MODERN GEOGRAPHY. By Dr. Marion New-
bigin. Shows the relation of physical features to living
things and to some of the chief institutions of civilization.
8. POLAR EXPLORATION. By Dr. W. S. Bruce,
leader of the “Scotia” expedition. Emphasizes the results
of the expedition.
13. MEDIEVAL EUROPE. By H. W. C. Davis, Fellow
at Balliol College, Oxford, author of “Charlemagne,” etc.
18. THE OPENING UP OF AFRICA. By Sir H. H.
Johnston.
19. THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA. By H. A. Giles,
Professor of Chinese, Cambridge.
20. HISTORY OF OUR TIME (1885-1911). By C. P.
Gooch.
22. THE PAPACY AND MODERN TIMES. By Rev.
William Barry, D.D., author of “The Papal Monarchy,”
etc. The story of the rise and fall of the Temporal Power.
26. THE DAWN OF HISTORY. By J. L. Myers,
Professor of Ancient History, Oxford.
30. ROME. By W. Wards Fowler, author of "Social Life
at Rome,” etc.
33. THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By A. F. Pollard,
Professor of English History, University of London.
34. CANADA. By A. G. Bradley.
36. PEOPLES AND PROBLEMS OF INDIA. By Sir
T. W. Holderness. “The best small treatise dealing with
the range of subjects fairly indicated by the title.” —
The Dial.
51. MASTER MARINERS. By John R. Spears, author
of “The History of Our Navy,” etc. A history of sea
craft adventure from the earliest time*.
57- NAPOLEON. By H. A. L. Fisher, Vice-Chancellor of
Sheffield University. Author of “The Republican Tradi-
tion in Europe.”
72. GERMANY OF TO-DAY. By Charles Tower.
76. THE OCEAN. A GENERAL ACCOUNT OF THE
SCIENCE OF THE SEA. By Sir John Murray,
K.C.B., Naturalist H. M. S. “Challenger,” 1872-1876,
joint author of “The Depths of the Ocean,” etc.
78. LATIN AMERICA. By William R. Shepherd, Pro-
fessor of History, Columbia. With maps. The historical,
artistic and commercial development of the Central South
American republics.
84. THE GROWTH OF EUROPE. By Granville Cole,
Professor of Geology, Royal College of Science, Ireland.
A study of the geology and physical geography in connec-
tion with the political geography.
86. EXPLORATION OF THE ALPS. By Arnold
Lunn, M.A.
92. THE ANCIENT EAST. By D. G. Hogarth, M.A.,
F.B.A., F.S.A. Connects with Prof. Myers’s “Dawn
of History” (No. 26) at about 1000 B. C. and reviews the
history of Assyria, Babylon, Cilicia, Persia and Macedonia.
94. THE NAVY AND SEA POWER. By David Han-
nay, author of “Short History of the Royal Navy,” etc.
A brief history of the navies, sea power, and ship growth
of all nations, including the rise and decline of America on
the sea, and explaining the present British supremacy.
95. BELGIUM. By R. C. K. Ensor, sometime Scholar of
Balliol College. The geographical, linguistic, historical,
artistic and literary associations.
100. POLAND. By J. Alison Phillips, University of Dublin.
The history of Poland with special emphasis upon the
Polish question of the present day.
102. SERBIA. By L. F. Waring, with preface by J. M.
Jovanovitch, Serbian Minister to Great Britain. The
main outlines of Serbian history, with special emphasis on
the immediate causes of the war and the questions in the
after-the-war settlement.
104. OUR FORERUNNERS. By M. C. Burkitt, M.A.,
F.S.A. A comprehensive study of the beginnings of
mankind and the culture of the prehistoric era.
105. COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY. By Marion I. New-
bigin. Fundamental conceptions of commodities, transport
and market.
108. WALES. By W. Watkin Davies, M.A., F.R. Hist.
S., Barrister-at-Law, author of “How to Read History,”
etc.
no. EGYPT. By E. A. Wallis Budge, M.A., Litt.D.
114. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. By Norman H.
Baynes. The period from the recognition of Christianity
by the state to the date when the Latin sovereigns sup-
planted the Byzantines.
120. ENGLAND UNDER THE TUDORS AND THE
STUARTS. By Keith Felling, M.A. The period of
Transition from 1485 to 1688.
iai. HISTORY OF ENGLAND (1688-1815). By E. M.
WRONG, M.A. A continuation and development of Mr.
Feiling’s “England Under the Tudors and the Stuarts.”
127. THE CIVILIZATION OF JAPAN. By J. Ingram
Bryan, Extension Lecturer for the University of Cam-
bridge in Japanese History and Civilization. A brief
sketch of the origins and developments of Japanese civi-
lization.
128. HISTORY OF ENGLAND (1815-1918). By Pro-
fessor J. R. M. Butler. Gives a vivid impression of the
chief ways in which English life was transformed in the
century between Waterloo and the Armistice and of the
forces which caused the transformation.
129. THE BRITISH EMPIRE. By Basil Williams,
Professor of History at Edinburgh University. Sketches
the growth of the British Empire from the times of the
early adventurers to the present day.
LITERATURE AND ART
2. SHAKESPEARE. By John Masefield. “One of the
very few indispensable adjuncts to a Shakespearian
Library.” — Boston T ranscript.
27. MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE. By G. H.
Mair. From Wyatt and Surrey to Synge and Yeats.
“One of the best of this great series.” — Chicago Evening
Post.
3i. LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LITERATURE. By
G. L. Strachey, Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge.
“It is difficult to imagine how a better account of French
Literature could be given in 250 pages.” — London Times.
38. ARCHITECTURE. By Prof. W. R. Lethaby. An
introduction to the history and theory of the art of
building.
40. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By L. P. Smith. A
concise history of its origin and development.
45. MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE. By W. P.
Ker, Professor of English Literature, University College,
London. “One of the soundest scholars. His style is ef-
fective, simple, yet never dry.” — The Athenaeum.
48. GREAT WRITERS OF AMERICA. By W. P.
Trent and John Erskine, Columbia University.
58. THE NEWSPAPER. By G. Binney Dibblee. The
first full account from the inside of newspaper organiza-
tion as it exists today.
59. DR. JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE. By John
Bailey. Johnson’s life, character, works and friendships
are surveyed; and there is a notable vindication of the
“Genius of Boswell.”
61. THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE. By
G. K. Chesterton.
62. PAINTERS AND PAINTING. By Sir Frederick
Wedmore. With 16 half-tone illustrations.
64. THE LITERATURE OF GERMANY. By J. G.
Robertson.
66. WRITING ENGLISH PROSE. By William T.
Brewster, Professor of English, Columbia University.
“Should be put into the hands of every man who is be-
ginning to write and of every teacher of English who has
brains enough to understand sense.” — New York Sun.
70. ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL. By Jane E. Harri-
son, LL.D., D.Litt. “One of the 100 most important
books of 1913.” — New York Times Review.
73. EURIPIDES AND HIS AGE. By Gilbert Murray,
Regius Professor of Greek, Oxford.
75. SHELLEY, GODWIN AND THEIR CIRCLE. By
H. N. Brailsford. The influence of the French Revolu-
tion on England.
81. CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES. By Grace E. Hadow,
Lecturer Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; Late Reader,
Bryn Mawr.
83. WILLIAM MORRIS: HIS WORK AND IN-
FLUENCE. By A. Clutton Brock, author of “Shelley:
The Man and the Poet.” William Morris believed that
the artist should toil for love of his work rather than the
gain of his employer, and so he turned from making works
of art to remaking society.
87. THE RENAISSANCE. By Edith Sichel, author of
“Catherine de Medici,” “Men and Women of the French
Renaissance.”
89. ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. By J. M. Robert-
son, M.P., author of “Montaigne and Shakespeare,”
“Modern Humanists.”
93. AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE. By
Maurice Baring, author of “The Russian People,” etc.
Tolstoi, Tourgenieff, Dostoieffsky, Pushkin (the father of
Russian Literature), Saltykov (the satirist), Leskov, and
many other authors.
97. MILTON. By John Bailey.
101. DANTE. By Jeflerson B. Fletcher, Columbia Uni-
versity. An interpretation of Dante and his teaching
from his writings.
106. PATRIOTISM IN LITERATURE. By John Drink-
water.
109. MUSIC. By Sir W. H. Hadow.
1 17. DRAMA. By Ashley Dukes. The nature and varieties
of drama and the factors that make up the theatre, from
dramatist to audience.
132. THE LITERATURE OF JAPAN. By J. Ingram
Bryan, Extension Lecturer for the University of Cam-
bridge in Japanese History and Civilization.
134. AN ANTHOLOGY OF ENGLISH POETRY:
Wyatt to Dryden. By Mrs. F. E. A. Campbell.
NATURAL SCIENCE
9. THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS. By Dr. D. H.
Scott, President of the Linnean Society of London. The
story of the development of flowering plants, from the
earliest zoological times, unlocked from technical language.
12. THE ANIMAL WORLD. By Prof. F. W. Gamble.
14. EVOLUTION. By Prof. J. Arthur Thomson and
Prof. Patrick Geddes. Explains to the layman what the
title means to the scientific world.
15. INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICS. By A. N.
Whitehead, author of “Universal Algebra.”
17. CRIME AND INSANITY. By Dr. C. Mercier, author
of “Crime and Criminals,” etc.
ax. AN INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE. By Prof. J.
Arthur Thomson, Science Editor of the Home University
Library. For those unacquainted with the scientific
volumes in the series this should prove an excellent intro-
duction.
23. ASTRONOMY. By A. R. Hinks, Chief Assistant at
the Cambridge Observatory. “Decidedly original in sub-
stance, and the most readable and informative little book
on modern astronomy we have seen for a long time.” —
Nature.
24. PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. By Prof. W. F. Barrett,
formerly President of the Society for Psychical Research.
37. ANTHROPOLOGY. By R. R. Marett, Reader in
Social Anthropology, Oxford. Seeks to plot out and sum
up the general series of changes, bodily and mental, under-
gone by man in the course of history. “Excellent. So
enthusiastic, so clear and witty, and so well adapted to the
general reader.” — American Library Association Booklist.
41. PSYCHpLOGY, THE STUDY OF BEHAVIOUR.
By William McDougall, of Oxford. A well-digested
summary of the essentials of the science put in excellent
literary form by a leading authority.
42. THE PRINCIPLES OF PHYSIOLOGY. By Prof.
J. G. McKendrick. A compact statement by the Emeritus
Professor at Glasgow, for uninstructed readers.
43. MATTER AND ENERGY. By F. Soddy, Lecturer in
Physical Chemistry and Radioactivity, University of Glas-
gow. “Brilliant. Can hardly be surpassed. Sure to attract
attention.” — New York Sun.
53. ELECTRICITY. By Gisbert Kapp, Professor of
Electrical Engineering, University of Birmingham.
54. THE MAKING OF THE EARTH. By J. W.
Gregory, Professor of Geology, Glasgow University. 38
maps and figures. Describes the origin of the earth, the
formation and changes of its surface and structure, its
geological history, the first appearance of life, and its
influence upon the globe.
56. MAN: A HISTORY OF THE HUMAN BODY. By
A. Keith, M.D., Hunterian Professor, Royal College of
Surgeons, London. Shows how the human body developed.
63. THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. By Ben-
jamin M. Moore, Professor of Bio-Chemistry, Liverpool.
68. DISEASE AND ITS CAUSES. By W. T. Council-
man, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Pathology, Harvard
University.
71. PLANT LIFE. By J. B. Farmer, D.Sc., F.R.S., Pro-
fessor of Botany in the Imperial College of Science, Lon-
don. This very fully illustrated volume contains an ac-
count of the salient features of plant form and function.
74. NERVES. By David Fraser Harris, M. D., Professor
of Physiology, Dalhousie University, Halifax. Explains
in nontechnical language the place and powers of the
nervous system.
85. SEX. By J. Arthur Thomson and Patrick Geddes,
joint authors of “The Evolution of Sex.”
90. CHEMISTRY. By Raphael Meldola, F.R.S., Pro-
fessor of Chemistry, Finsbury Technical College. Pre-
sents the way in which the science has developed and the
stage it has reached.
107. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF
HEREDITY. By E. W. MacBride, Professor of Zo-
ology in the Imperial College of Science and Technology,
London.
hi. BIOLOGY. By J. Arthur Thomson and Patrick
Geddes.
1 12. BACTERIOLOGY. By Prof. Carl H. Browning.
115. MICROSCOPY. By Robert M. Neill, Aberdeen Uni-
versity. Microscopic technique subordinated to results of
investigation and their value to man.
116. EUGENICS. By A. M. Carr-Saunders. Biological
problems, together with the facts and theories of heredity.
119. GAS AND GASES. By R. M. Caven, D.Sc., F.I.C.,
Royal Technical College, Glasgow. The chemical and
physical nature of gases, both in their scientific and his-
torical aspects.
122. BIRDS, AN INTRODUCTION TO ORNITHOL-
OGY. By A. L. Thompson, O.B.E., D.Sc. A general
account of the characteristics, mainly of habit and behavior
of birds.
124. SUNSHINE AND HEALTH. By Ronald Campbell
Macfie, M.B.C.M., LL.D. Light and its relation to man
treated scientifically.
125. INSECTS. By Frank Balfour-Browne, Professor of
Entomology in the Imperial College of Science and Tech-
nology, London.
126. TREES. By MacGregor Skene, D.Sc., F.L.S. Senior
Lecturer on Botany, Bristol University. A concise
study of the classification, history, structure, architecture,
growth, enemies, care and protection of trees. Forestry
and economics are also discussed.
138. THE LIFE OF THE CELL. By David Lands-
borough Thomson, Lecturer in Biochemistry, McGill
University.
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
35. THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY. By Ber-
trand Russell, Lecturer and Late Fellow Trinity College,
Cambridge.
44. BUDDHISM. By Mrs. Rhys Davids, Lecturer on In-
dian Philosophy, Manchester.
46. ENGLISH SECTS: A HISTORY OF NONCON-
FORMITY. By W. B. Selbie, Principal of Manchester
College, Oxford.
50. THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By
B. W. Bacon, Professor of New Testament Criticism,
Yale. An authoritative summary of the results of modern
critical research with regard to the origins of the New
Testament.
52. ETHICS. By G. E. Moore, Lecturer in Moral Science,
Cambridge. Discusses what is right and what is wrong,
and the whys and wherefores.
55. MISSIONS: THEIR RISE AND DEVELOPMENT.
By Mrs. Mandell Creighton, author of “History of Eng-
land.’’ The author seeks to prove that missions have done
more to civilize the world than any other human agency.
60. COMPARATIVE RELIGION. By Prof. J. Estlin
Carpenter. “One of the few authorities on this subject
compares all the religions to see what they have to offer
on the great themes of religion.” — Christian Work and
Evangelist.
65. THE LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
By George F. Moore, Professor of the History of Re-
ligion, Harvard University. “A popular work of the
highest order. Will be profitable to anybody who cares
enough about Bible study to read a serious book on the
subject.” — American Journal of Theology.
69. A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT. By
John B. Bury, M.A., LL.D., Regius Professor of Modern
History in Cambridge University. Summarizes the history
of the long struggle between authority and reason and of
the emergence of the principle that coercion of opinion
is a mistake.
88. RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN OLD
AND NEW TESTAMENTS. By R. H. Charles,
Canon of Westminster. Shows how religious and ethical
thought between 180 B. C. and 100 A. D. grew naturally
into that of the New Testament.
96. A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. By Clement C.
J. Webb, Oxford.
130. JESUS OF NAZARETH. By Charles Gore, for-
merly Bishop of Oxford.
SOCIAL SCIENCE
x. PARLIAMENT. ITS HISTORY, CONSTITU-
TION, AND PRACTICE. By Sir Courtenay P.
Ilbert, Clerk of the House of Commons.
5. THE STOCK EXCHANGE. By F. V/. Hirst, Editor
of the London Economist. Reveals to the nonfinancial
mind the facts about investment, speculation, and the other
terms which the title suggests.
6. IRISH NATIONALITY. By Mrs. J. R. Green. A
brilliant account of the genius and mission of the Irish
people. “An entrancing work, and I would advise everyone
with a drop of Irish blood in his veins or a vein of Irish
sympathy in his heart to read it.” — New York Times
Review. (Revised Edition, 1929.)
10. THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. By J. Ramsay
Macdonald, Chairman of the British Labor Party.
xi. THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH. By J. A. Hobson,
author of “Problems of Poverty.” A study of the struc-
ture and working of the modern business world.
16. LIBERALISM. By Prof. L. T. Hobhouse, author of
“Democracy and Reaction.” A masterly philosophical and
historical review of the subject.
28. THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY. By D. H.
MacGregor, Professor of Political Economy, University
of Leeds. An outline of the recent changes that have
given us the present conditions of the working classes and
the principles involved.
29. ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LAV/. By W. M.
Geldart, Vinerian Professor of English Law, Oxford. A
simple statement of the basic principles of the English
legal system on which that of the United States is based.
32. THE SCHOOL: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE
STUDY OF EDUCATION. By J. J. Findlay, Pro-
fessor of Education, Manchester. Presents the history, the
psychological basis, and the theory of the school with a
rare power of summary and suggestion.
49. ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. By S.
J. Chapman, Professor of Political Economy and Dean
of Faculty of Commerce and Administration, University
of Manchester.
77. CO-PARTNERSHIP AND PROFIT SHARING.
By Aneurin Williams, Chairman, Executive Committee,
International Co-operative Alliance, etc. Explains the
various types of co-partnership and profit-sharing, and
gives details of the arrangements now in force in many of
the great industries.
79. UNEMPLOYMENT. By A. C. Pigou, M.A., Pro-
fessor of Political Economy at Cambridge. The meaning,
measurement, distribution and effects of unemployment,
its relation to wages, trade fluctuations and disputes, and
some proposals of remedy or relief.
80. COMMON SENSE IN LAW. By Prof. Paul Vino-
gradoff, D.C.L., LL.D. Social and Legal Rules — Legal
Rights and Duties — Facts and Acts in Law — Legislation —
Custom — Judicial Precedents — Equity — The Law of Na-
ture.
91. THE NEGRO. By W. E. Burghardt DuBois, author
of “Souls of Black Folks,” etc. A history of the black
man in Africa, America and elsewhere.
98. POLITICAL THOUGHT: FROM HERBERT
SPENCER TO THE PRESENT DAY. By Ernest
Barker, M.A.
99. POLITICAL THOUGHT: THE UTILITARIANS.
FROM BENTHAM TO J. S. MILL. By William L.
P. Davidson.
103. ENGLISH POLITICAL THOUGHT. From Locke
to Bentham. By Harold J. Laski, Professor of Political
Science in the London School of Economics.
113. ADVERTISING. By Sir Charles Higham.
118. BANKING. By Walter Leaf, President, Institute of
Bankers ; President, International Chamber of Com-
merce. The elaborate machinery of the financing of
industry.
123. COMMUNISM. By Harold J. Laski, Professor of
Political Science at the University of London. The author
tries to state the communist “theses” in such a way that
even its advocates will recognize that an opponent can
summarize them fairly.
131. INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY. By Charles S.
Myers, Director of the National Institute of Industrial
Psychology in England. The only comprehensive study
of the human factor in industry.
133. THE GROWTH OF INTERNATIONAL
THOUGHT. By F. Melian Stawell.
Date Due
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